Dreams in a Time of War

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  Suddenly at the water ceremony there is a surprise. Kenneth Mbũgua has been allowed to participate after all. His parents have decided that there was no way that we, his playmates and schoolmates, would leave him behind. But there was no time to shave him, so he is the only candidate with head and pubic hair. I am glad to see him, but there is no time to talk. We are being shepherded toward our fate.

  The water is extremely cold, chilly, but now again I am thinking of the knife. Shall I be able to endure the pain and come out of it with courage? I know there is concern in my camp. Cowardice is defined very narrowly. If I so much as blink or let out the slightest sound or make the faintest facial expression, I shall bring shame to my family and community and the word “coward” will stick, a stigma for life. The candidates are a mixture of those who have been to school and those who have not. Students are looked upon as having been softened by books and modern learning. They cannot take pain. I know that the eyes of the curious are on me.

  Each of us has a guardian. Mine is my half brother Njinjũ wa Njeri, the third son of the fourth of my father’s wives. Yongĩ is Ndũng’ũ’s guardian. I am not sure about Kenneth’s, but, really, now, as I am made to sit down on the grass, I am worrying only about my own fate. My legs are open, knees bent, firmly planted on the ground. My hands form fists, thumb between the middle and index finger, my elbows rest on my knees. My manhood is there for all to stare at, but in reality they are not interested in it; they are more concerned with my reaction when the knife meets the foreskin. I hear some movement. It is the surgeon. My guardian is standing behind me holding me down by the shoulders. I remain completely frozen: Oh, Lord, let me go through this without flinching. During the preparations some people have been telling us scary tales, of the knife accidentally cutting too deeply or even slicing off a piece of one’s manhood. I don’t believe it but suppose … suppose something went wrong? I don’t know the surgeon; I have heard that my relative Mwangi Karuithia might officiate. I don’t even see the surgeon’s face. It is over before I know it is happening. I do not feel the knife. The cold water had numbed my skin. My guardian quickly covers me with a white cotton cloth that extends from my shoulders to my feet; all the women are ululating with pride. I know I have come through. So do Ndũng’ũ and Kenneth. After the surgery one can express pain in any way, even through tears; there is now no stigma attached to such reactions, but I try to hold myself together. I must not contribute to the view, which I don’t accept, that book learning makes one soft and weak.

  We walk back. The sides of our white togas are held together by a line of safety pins. The Gĩkũyũ don’t remove the foreskin completely, it is left hanging below the tip of the penis. I have been taught how to walk, legs apart, one hand holding up the penis, a finger separating the tip from the hanging foreskin, so that it does not rub against the loose foreskin or against the cloth. The walk is difficult and slow. The entourage that had escorted us to the waterside has largely disappeared, no doubt to catch up with sleep and neglected tasks.

  We three, Kenneth, Ndũng’ũ, and I, end up in the healing shed, a small hut, deep in my grandfather’s land, but not too near any compound. We, the initiates, lie on beds of straw, covered with sheets and blankets. Kenneth has a mentor, Karanja Zinguri. Our three mentors sleep in a room opposite, with a common living space between us. But we can hear them, and they can hear us. No initiate is allowed to go back to his normal life at home. We are set apart. We shall be kept here for three weeks at least. Food will be brought to us, but not even relatives are allowed beyond the door without permission from the guardians. During the healing period, our three guardians are our only contact with the world. They are our mentors, guides, and instructors in the ways of adulthood and manly responsibilities.

  Though they are concerned with our physical welfare, our mentors are also training us in the ways of self-control. Questions about our swollen foreskin, which looks tumorous, elicit from them the horrifying response that we are growing a second penis. If I had known that the rite involved having two … but I do not want to contemplate such an outcome. They occasionally bring in girls to simulate the sex act, an exaggerated performance of lovemaking with erotic noises meant to reach our ears. This results in our tumescence, stretching the healing skin, causing excruciating pain, till one of us screams, Stop! Stop it. They come out laughing, lecturing us about self-control. My fear of the predicted “growth” of a second penis ends only after the foreskin becomes simply a soft growth below the tip of the penis. And now they tell us about the healed foreskin. It is good for the woman; it massages her nicely, and that is why it is called ngwati, “lovemaker,” partner in love motions.

  Afterward, when we heal enough to walk without too much pain, we shall be allowed to socialize with other initiates from the other villages before returning to our shed to sleep. Other initiates can also visit us. All the initiates are still identifiable by our uniform: a long togalike cloth fastened by safety pins. A bamboo walking stick completes the attire. When we walk along the road, people of all ages give way.

  Eventually the day comes when we are given back our regular clothes, say farewell to our shed and mentors, and go home to our everyday life, with a difference. I am now a man. I belong to a new age group. I have cut off all social links with friends who have not undergone this rite. I cannot socialize with them, play with them, share secrets with them. Our contacts and conversations are minimal and formal. It is as if I had jumped over an invisible wall from one side of life to another. On the other side of the wall is my old self; on this side, the new. I am now welcome into the social company of my elder brother Wallace and his friends. I can attend their parties and be privy to their jokes and stories about women.

  Kahanya, my brother’s close friend, takes me under his wing and eases my path into the company of men. He introduces me to the girl with whom I will soon lose my virginity, the last rite of entry into the new world. It is not a great moment, but it is the proof I need that I have become a man indeed.

  Though the whole ritual of becoming a man leaves a deep impression on me, I emerge from it convinced more deeply that, for our times, education and learning, not a mark on the flesh, are the way to empower men and women.

  We returned to Kĩnyogori Intermediate School, a two-year middle school between elementary and secondary school, but we would be there for only one year, having spent the other year at the old Manguo site, awaiting completion of new buildings at the new location. The school was under the Kĩambu District Education Board. This was going to be the third move of my elementary school career.

  It was 1954, a pivotal year, the last stage of my primary education, at the end of which I would take the Kenya African Preliminary Exams, a make-or-break educational rite of passage. There were corresponding exams for Asians and Europeans for entry into equally racially segregated secondary schools. Integration was not a central demand in anticolonial politics, except for the general call to end the color bar. School integration would come about later, after independence in 1963. The chief demands were for land and freedom, and equal opportunity in educational facilities. For Africans, there were very few secondary schools, and the competition to attend these was extremely fierce, many students falling by the wayside. The situation worsened after the closure of independent schools and the Kenya Teachers’ College at Gĩthũngũri. The Beecher Report, which sought to streamline and expand African secondary schooling, was out of tune with the needs of the times even before it came out, and competition intensified.

  For us, the challenges were not purely academic or confined to the school compound. There was the simple one of distance: Kĩnyogori was six miles away. Harder challenges involved tuition and uniforms, as usual. The long walk to school provided an opportunity for news and entertainment: We swapped stories about what had happened in our homes and neighborhoods. The state of emergency had acquired the dimensions of a huge mysterious creature, ever growing as it trod menacingly toward us. Everybody had a tale to tell of
what it had done to their family, neighbors, or relatives in Nairobi—victims of its operations from Jock Scott to General Erskine’s Operation Anvil that sought to remove all members of Gĩkũyũ, Embu, and Meru communities from Nairobi. The creature became the instrument of what was now the official colonial policy: the dislocation of thousands. Limuru was only about eighteen miles from the capital. There were stories of the dead, and of hundreds herded into concentration camps. Of course, some stories were about how so-and-so had managed to slip through the net, but most were about the desolation the state of emergency had wrought.

  In the villages, tales spread of how some avoided compliance with forced communal labor and compulsory baraza attendance: of how fathers or mothers had locked themselves inside stinking latrines and yet had been ferreted out by the Home Guards; others who faked illnesses or death to no avail; and yet others who hid in holes they had dug, covering them to look like their surroundings. It was clear that the constant daytime and nighttime raids and the mass incarcerations were breaking up families, taking away or incapacitating breadwinners, and diminishing parental care. People lived under a double fear: of government operations by day and Mau Mau guerrilla activities by night, the difference being that while the guerrillas were fighting for land and freedom, the colonial state was fighting to sustain foreign occupation and protect the prerogatives and wealth of European settlers.

  The British day raids, aided by loyalist Home Guard squads, were often sudden and unexpected. They would quickly surround and cordon off the Limuru market. Those netted would be made to squat in twos, threes, or fours, depending on the size of the crowd, their hands held together behind their necks, while they were guarded on all sides by armed British forces of white officers and black policemen. They would stay in that torturous position under the hot sun awaiting screening. One by one they would walk past a table occupied by a British armed officer. Beside him would be one or two hooded men, called gakũnia, who would nod yes or no to the person’s involvement in Mau Mau. A yes nod meant further questioning for the culprit and then on to a concentration camp. These mass screenings were dreaded, and when the army trucks were sighted, word would pass swiftly. Many young men would abandon their jobs and go into hiding or run away, sometimes under intense machine-gun fire. I would listen to these episodes, pondering the bad that had not yet happened to my mother’s house and counting my blessings. There were near misses. There was one incident the memory of which I always tried to suppress.

  It happened months before I became a man. School was then still at Manguo. I don’t know what possessed me and made me run home for a lunch I was not sure I would find. My mother and my sister Njoki, sitting outside in the yard sorting out some beans they would later cook, were surprised to see me at that hour, and, predictably, there was nothing to calm my hunger. My mother offered to roast some potatoes, the only thing available, but this would take hours, and I would miss school or else be very late. I looked up wistfully at the unripe fruits on the pear tree. She never allowed us to pick unripe fruits; she said this interfered with the rhythm of life of the plant, and she did not want to hurt its feelings. But this time she did not object, although she never nodded consent. After eating I dashed in the hut, took some water, and ran out into the yard, ready to go back to school.

  It was my mother who suddenly became aware of people surreptitiously running through the surrounding cornfields. She shouted at me to come back. Seeing my hesitation, she reminded me that it was she who had struck the pact with me and it was she who was telling me to break it. Hungry and frustrated, despite the unripe pears, I ignored her plea and continued walking down the path by the hedge that divided our land from Kahahu’s estate. I had not gone far when I heard gunfire. Silence. Then at a distance I saw them, many Johnnies, as the British soldiers were called, spread out in the fields everywhere. I hid behind a blue gum tree and slowly started walking back, hoping the tree would shield me from view. Then I heard more gunfire. Screams and shouts. Gunfire. I fell down, started crawling on all fours, before getting up and running back home. My mother and sister, who were still standing in the yard, dragged me into the hut. We could still hear sounds of gunfire, but after a time they faded into silence, and the Johnnies did not come anywhere near our home. I was shaken but relieved that I had not walked straight into the path of the gunfire. It was probably the first time I had failed to go to school for reasons other than illness.

  When in the evening Wallace and his friends came home, they were full of talk of how each had escaped. There were many who had been taken away for questioning and to concentration camps. They talked of rumors of death, but they were not sure of the victims or even whether this was only one of the many tales that accompanied every raid. It was clear that this was not the first time my brother and his friends had run away from raids at the marketplace.

  A few days later we learned that some people had been killed, one of the casualties being Gĩtogo, my half brother, the last born of Wangarĩ’s sons. His case was tragic. Gĩtogo worked in a butchery in Limuru. He had started running, following the example of others. Being deaf, he did not hear the white officer shouting simama, stop. They shot him in the back.

  His death exemplified what was beginning to happen to families everywhere. Gĩtogo was the younger brother of Joseph Kabae, ex-military man, the owner of a legal and secretarial services firm, who was now working for the colonial state, one of the few who were licensed to carry a pistol, though he was always dressed in civilian clothes.

  I remembered Gĩtogo as a regular jovial presence at the storytelling sessions at his mother’s hut, despite the fact that he could not hear. A handsome youth, Gĩtogo had a winning personality and never did any harm to anybody. He was always ready to come to the aid of all, particularly when it came to lifting heavy loads. I was sad to hear of his death. But since we had lived apart from my father’s house for some years, Gĩtogo’s death, though painful, may not have hit me as directly as it had others who were in daily contact with him.

  By the time I went through the ceremony of becoming a man and resumed schooling at Kĩnyogori, the memory of this tragedy had faded. A human normalizes the unusual in order to survive. I could still count my blessings because though the state-of-emergency creature had now touched my father’s house, it had not yet reached the compound of my mother’s house.

  If anything, there was a happy addition there. Wallace had gotten married to the beautiful girl guide from Banana Hills, Charity Wanjikũ, and they were blessed with Mũturi, their first child. It was interesting to see Wallace, the efficient carpenter, become a family man, a tender father, always anxious to come home to his wife, gazing at the newborn as if he could not believe that he was their flesh and blood. Before the birth of his son, he still lived the bachelor life he was used to, sometimes spending the night in his workshop or elsewhere with his peers. But now we saw him almost every night, which also made us feel more secure and united as a family.

  Military vehicles, raids, screenings, screams, sirens from the Home Guard post, the sounds of machine-gun fire were becoming part of daily life. They made me feel that the slouching creature was inexorably closing in on my mother’s house.

  Yet when it finally struck on that April day in 1954, I was completely unprepared for it.

  Good Wallace was a member of the supply wing of the nationalist guerrilla army, the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. He and Uncle Gĩcini arranged to meet with a friendly source that would supply them with bullets. The source was the brother of a girl my brother used to date, but they had parted amicably. The meeting was in the open by a road that linked the old Indian shops to the African marketplace. Between my mother’s parcel of land and the road was a small hedge. At the time, my mother was tending a mixed crop of green corn and beans. Good Wallace and Uncle Gĩcini shouted greetings to her. Otherwise she was unbothered by the goings-on in the busy road. Twelve bullets and money exchanged hands and the source went away. Wallace and Gĩcini divided the bullets between the
m, six each. Wallace put his share in the inner pocket of his jacket, Uncle Gĩcini, in his trouser pockets.

  Uncle Gĩcini and my brother had not moved a step when a police truck suddenly appeared and stopped them. Unaware that their source was an informer, they took this to be the usual police harassment that was so common at the time. They thought they would be able to talk or even bribe their way out of trouble. The policeman assigned to frisk them started with my brother, going through every pocket except the one that contained the bullets. Then he went over to Uncle Gĩcini and found six bullets in his pocket. While the police concentrated entirely on Uncle Gĩcini, my brother dipped his hand in the inner pocket, took out the bullets, and threw them over the hedge onto the side where my mother was cultivating. The police were aware of the number of bullets that had changed hands, yet they found only six. Puzzled, the same policeman left Gĩcini in handcuffs and came back to frisk my brother again, this time not forgetting the inner pocket. Again he found nothing on him.

  The two of them were going to be taken to the police station anyway for further questioning but were treated differently. The apparently more dangerous Gĩcini was placed in the front passenger seat, handcuffed, sandwiched between two armed officers. My brother was hurled in the back of the truck, without handcuffs, guarded by one officer only. By this time the fracas had attracted the attention of my mother, who looked over the hedge. My brother told her not to worry; he would be all right. She should simply thikĩrĩra mbembe icio wega. This phrase had two meanings. The most common was simply a call for her to cover the stems of the growing corn with mulch. But it could also mean to bury grains of corn under the soil. Mbembe was a secret Mau Mau code for “bullets.” So it could also mean “hide the bullets carefully.” The law in those days was clear: Anybody caught with bullets was hanged at Gĩthũngũri, the former Kenya Teachers’ College.