Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  Through the tall grass he could see the speckled backs of his charges, and beyond, advancing quickly towards him, one animal, red-faced, seated on top of another, tall-eared. With a moan of fright he turned and fled, scuttling like a guinea-fowl through grass and bush to his father’s homestead.

  Matu listened to his son’s incoherent story calmly, took his old and rusty spear from the back of his hut, and went out to see what had occurred.

  “There are no animals here that are likely to eat you,” he reassured Karanja, “but it may be that something strange has come out of the forest.”

  But when he saw the animal bobbing through the grass in front he turned his head and chuckled. Karanja clutched at his father’s blanket for security. He now saw that behind the animal marched a line of Kikuyu men with loads on their backs and heads.

  “Do you not know what this creature is ?” Matu said. “It is harmless, and certainly does not eat children. It is a European riding on a tame animal. He has put a piece of iron into its mouth to bind its anger. He says to it: clk-clk-clk-clk, like a hen, and that makes it move.”

  Karanja had never before seen a European, for he had been herding goats in forest glades whenever one had come to the Mau.

  Before evening Matu knew that this European had come to stay, for he had brought with him many goods. He was very tall, so he was called Marafu; his hair was red. One leg was stiff; for this reason he walked with a limp and preferred to be carried by animals.

  Next morning Karanja herded the goats in another direction. Not for several days could he summon courage enough to venture close to the big square house. He approached delicately, glances recoiling before strange shapes; and then, without warning, a terrible noise beat upon his ears and two wild animals of the utmost ferocity leapt out at him like maddened lions. He ran desperately for shelter and barely slacked speed until he reached the homestead.

  That evening, in the thingira, his father laughed at him again.

  “I have seen those animals,” he said. “Europeans have them in the house to keep away thieves. Sometimes they seem to value them more than children. I have been told that Europeans believe that the spirits of their ancestors dwell in these beasts. We have no name for them but in Swahili they are called dogs. You must not run away, or they will bite; if you stand still they, too, will stand; if you touch them gently and say: ‘Go in peace,’ they will go, and not trouble you.”

  Karanja heard, but it was a long time before he dared to approach the European’s house again. He was kept busy herding goats and learning how to look after cattle. His father had proved the truth of the saying ‘wealth is like shade’; possessions had grown as life advanced, and now he could afford a small herd of cows. Karanja was given nothing for his herding, but he observed that his mother received coins from the Indians at Njoro when she sold her surplus maize and potatoes; so he decided to start a shamba of his own. He dug a small strip of garden behind the homestead at a time when he should have been looking after goats, and worked at this for several days. The goats, however, strayed on to a neighbour’s shamba and ate some young maize, and the owner brought a case against Matu before the elders’ council.

  Matu was very angry, but Wanja said: “Do not rebuke him, or he will not wish to cultivate any more. He shall call his friends to help; and then he can dig in his shamba early in the morning and herd goats or calves for the rest of the day.” So she bought green bananas in the market, packed them in a gourd with leaves of the tree makurue to ripen, and prepared a feast; and Karanja asked boys from all the homesteads around to cultivate his shamba. One day he walked into market behind his mother with a small sack of his own maize to sell. But when he got the money he did not know what to do with it. He was not old enough to buy ornaments; so he buried it under the floor of his mother’s hut.

  2

  SOON after the European Marafu came he called all the men to a meeting. He was unable to speak to them, but an overseer announced:

  “This European, whom you must address as bwana, has bought all this land and intends to cultivate a very big shamba. Everyone living on his land must come to work for him for one month and then rest for one month, so that in every European’s year a man will work for bwana for six months and go home for six months to work for himself. And for each month that a man works for bwana, he will be paid six rupees.

  “Every man may cultivate a shamba and may keep his goats and cattle on bwana’s land; but henceforth he must on no account cut down or injure any trees.”

  A few days later an officer from the Serkali came and called each man before him in turn. Matu was asked his name and circumcision age and many other questions, and told to press his fingers on to a dark substance and then on to two pieces of paper; and he saw that his fingers left black smudges on the white. He was given one of the pieces of paper and told to keep it carefully, for it would protect him from being taken or molested by the Serkali or by other Europeans. He made a little goatskin bag and kept it on a chain around his neck, thinking that if it protected him from such things it must be a very powerful magic indeed. He heard later that its name was Kipande, and that it was given away for nothing.

  Every morning Matu went to dig big stumps out of Marafu’s shamba. Oxen came, very big ones, and were made to drag the stumps away; but stumps were many, and the rains were approaching, and it became apparent that the shamba would not be ready in time.

  One morning Matu saw, to his great alarm, a large party of wild, foreign-looking men, their hair done in plaits and a queue like Masai, walking across the shamba at the heels of the overseer Kimani. Yet they looked too savage and unkempt for Masai, and they spoke in a strange tongue. They did not know in the least how to use any implements for digging, and they made fools of themselves trying to learn. But they knew at once how to handle oxen.

  That night a meeting of married men was summoned and Matu learnt that they belonged to a tribe called Kipsigis.

  “These people are very bad indeed,” Kagama said. “They steal cattle continually and are enemies of the Kikuyu, and they also have many very powerful sorcerers among them. The Kikuyu cannot live at peace with these thieves. We will tell Marafu that they must go.”

  The message was delivered, but it received a very rude reply. Marafu said that the Kipsigis were to stay, and that if the Kikuyu objected they, and not the Kipsigis, must go. The Kikuyu said nothing, but they would not approach close to the Kipsigis, and the work of stumping went more slowly still. Marafu came and shouted at them in the manner of Europeans, like an angry child, but they paid no attention.

  3

  THEN, as the Kikuyu had feared, cows began to disappear. A boma belonging to Kagama’s brother was broken into and two heifers stolen. The owner complained next morning and Marafu sent men to search among the Kipsigis, who lived in a group of huts by themselves. But there was no sign of the heifers; whether they had been eaten overnight and the bones buried, or whether they had been hidden in the forest, nobody knew. Marafu sent a message that the Kikuyu were to cease making false accusations against the Kipsigis. This made the Kikuyu very angry, and they began to talk of leaving Marafu and finding land elsewhere.

  Worse was to follow. It became apparent that the Kipsigis were making magic against the Kikuyu. Several men awoke in the night to hear mysterious rustlings in the thatch and the sound of light missiles striking the roof on the side nearest to the Kipsigis’ huts. After that things began to go wrong. Kagama’s youngest wife, in her first pregnancy, bore premature twins which had to be suffocated and buried, since it was no longer safe to leave corpses in the bush for fear of Europeans. The eldest child of his brother fell into the fire and was too badly burnt to survive, and two of Matu’s heifer calves sickened and died within three days. To confirm the cause of these disasters—if confirmation were needed—twigs were found on several paths arranged in such a way that sorcery could not be doubted. Practically no one went to work the next day, and when Kimani came to summon the men they refused to g
o. Marafu sent messages that if they did not come each one would lose a month’s pay; but they still paid no attention.

  Kagama took a goat to Matu and asked him to lay a retaliatory curse on the Kipsigis. Matu had first to send a colleague by train to Kiambu to fetch special medicines from plants which did not grow on the Mau. He mixed them with the blood and stomach contents of the goat, put them in the spike of a mununga tree and gave them to a young man, with instructions to take the medicine three times in a circle around the Kipsigis’ encampment and then to bury it under the path that they took to work.

  The medicine took effect within ten days. A Kipsigis brought an axe down on his companion’s leg, fracturing the bone. The man was bound up by Marafu, put in a wagon, and taken to the train at Njoro; but he never returned.

  The same night another Kikuyu boma was broken into and a heifer stolen; and after that a guard of young men was set over all the cattle bomas at sunset. The youths no longer owned spears, but they had heavy-headed clubs and digging-knives. For two nights nothing happened; but on the morning of the third day the body of a Kipsigis youth was found clubbed to death in the bush not far from Kagama’s homestead.

  Since he had been a thief caught in the act and therefore executed legally, and without blood-price obligations, no one expected the matter to go further. But Marafu sent a messenger to Nakuru and next day a European of the Serkali arrived with two Wakamba assistants. For several days after that all was confusion and trouble. Everyone was questioned, bullied, rudely spoken to and generally annoyed. Since European law, for some unaccountable reason, seemed to support the thief, and since Marafu was known to be on the side of the Kipsigis, everyone denied all knowledge of the execution. In the middle of the disturbance the Kipsigis ran away in the night in a body, leaving a sense of great relief behind them.

  When it was certain that the Serkali’s agents had gone, two young men drove a goat to Matu’s to be purified and have their heads shaved and rubbed with fat. Everyone then knew whose club had protected Kikuyu property against the thieves; but Marafu apparently did not notice, or at any rate said no more. He had bought a big implement made of metal discs that turned the soil astonishingly quickly, and every day the shamba grew, although by now the rains had come and the land could not be got ready in time for the crop. But this was a small matter; there would be other seasons, and Marafu, like all Europeans, was obviously so rich that he would not be troubled by famine if he missed a crop.

  4

  KARANJA had a sister called Wamboi, three years younger than he. She was old enough to go with Wanja to the shamba and prod the soil with a knife, or to the forest for firewood or twine, or to the river to carry back a small gourd of water, and she had a little pot in which she sometimes cooked beans and maize on a fire of her own behind Wanja’s hut. One day she was taken ill and could eat no food. She lay on the bed all day, shivering with fever. Matu consulted the beans. They revealed that the girl’s mother had a thahu. Although its cause was obscure he purified his wife and daughter with a goat. Unfortunately, however, some detail went wrong. Wamboi grew no better and Karanja fell sick, showing the same symptoms.

  Matu, now seriously alarmed, decided to seek help from Marafu, who appeared to be a mundu-mugu—he kept many medicines in bottles in his house—and might know of a way to reject the evil spirits on his own land.

  Karanja and Wamboi were led, shivering and dragging their feet, to Marafu’s house. He came out to them holding a small white stick with markings on it which he put into Karanja’s mouth. Matu watched with interest; this was a new kind of magic altogether. Marafu took it out and examined it, and then frowned.

  “This child go Nakuru,” he said. He had learnt a little Swahili, but spoke it badly. “Very sick. I take inside motor-car.”

  Matu heard this in dismay; he could not let his children go out of his sight to be cared for by strangers.

  “It is not good for the girl to go,” he ventured.

  “All two go,” Marafu replied firmly.

  He had lately brought a motor-car to the farm. It roared like a lion on the hills and went very swiftly, although it did not like going out in the morning. It was bright red and had a box behind in which people might sit. Matu watched his children clambering in with great sadness. He did not believe that they were being taken to Nakuru and he never expected to see them again.

  Karanja’s sickness was so heavy that even the roaring in his ears and the contortions of the boards on which he sat had no power to frighten him. He remembered little until he found himself lying on a bed. Around him, instead of the warm smoky darkness of a hut, was the glare of daylight. A blanket covered him and there were beds all around, like goats on a hill, and an unpleasant smell.

  He lay there for many days, waiting for death. A man came often to thrust a white stick into his mouth, and another to give him sweet milk or medicines. Sometimes a European dressed in white approached and touched his eyes, or looked into his mouth. Gradually Karanja realised that the medicine was indeed driving out the evil spirits and not killing him, as he had supposed. The fever ebbed away and strength slowly replaced it. One day a man came to wash him all over with hot water, and he took this to mean that the purification was now complete. He was surprised, however, to find that this ceremony was repeated every day.

  He was given milk and eggs to eat, and was soon allowed to walk about in the afternoon. He found that in the hospital were Kikuyu attendants who knew how to use the magic of the Europeans. They could draw the shape of words and understand the markings on the white stick and mix medicines, for which no goats’ stomachs were used. They were conscious of their importance, and ordered sick people about with great authority. They wore clothes like Europeans, and Karanja knew that they must be fabulously rich. He admired them with all his spirit, and was filled with a great ambition to become like them when he was circumcised.

  The hospital contained many strange things. The strangest of all was a big iron box where fire was kept and on which vast quantities of food were cooked in iron pots. When Karanja realised that food for everyone was cooked together he could not bring himself to eat, fearing poison; but hunger overcame his terror.

  He was disappointed when, one day, an attendant told him that he must go. He walked home all day along a wide road. His parents greeted him with surprise and joy, for they had already mourned him as dead.

  “Certainly Europeans have some good magic,” Matu admitted. “Evidently their white stick can repel powerful spirits. All the same, I do not think that any cure can be certain or lasting without the sacrifice of a goat.”

  Karanja said nothing, but in his mind he was convinced that the Europeans knew a stronger magic than his father.

  A few days later Marafu went away in his motor-car and returned with Wamboi in the back. She, too, had recovered. Now no doubt was left in Karanja’s mind as to the power of the Europeans’ medicines.

  5

  AFTER this adventure Marafu’s house drew Karanja as a beehive in a hollow tree draws the bee-eater. He herded the goats so close to it that they trampled a clump of bright, sweet-smelling flowers and ate several shrubs. Karanja was chased away by a man in a long white robe, and Matu was fined three rupees. He forbade his son to go near the house again.

  Karanja was too fascinated to obey. The house was like a dream; there was no telling what was going to happen next. Once, early in the morning, he saw Marafu’s face entirely covered with what he took to be white chalk, and he knew that some magical ceremony was going on. In the evening he watched a huge iron pot full of water being taken in, perhaps for a sacrifice or a purification. He heard that Marafu had a kind of beer not made from sugar-cane or honey, so strong that when Marafu’s servant drank no more than half a horn-full, he staggered as if he had been beaten on the head and fell down unconscious to the floor. There was a great panic, for everyone thought that he had been poisoned, and the other men who worked for Marafu ran away. Marafu found out and was very angry; and after that no
one dared to touch the European’s beer again.

  One day Marafu went away for fifteen days and returned with a wife. Everyone who worked in the house was annoyed, for European women, as a general rule, were shrill-voiced, lazy, and bad-tempered. The ways of Europeans were always inexplicable, and most inexplicable of all was their failure to control their wives. Their women did not cook for them, left others to sweep and build the fire, never worked in the shamba; yet they did not seem to beat their wives, and they allowed them to argue and disobey. The wives, moreover, were grossly lacking in respect. They ate with their husbands, even meat; and the husbands often made open displays of physical affection, a thing no decent man would do. It could only be supposed that European women possessed some very powerful and secret magic to cause injury to any husband with whom they grew displeased. Charagu, Marafu’s head servant, said that this was so. He had known of a case where a husband displeased his wife by talking too often to another woman. His wife went away and left him, and shortly afterwards the man fell sick and died.

  Marafu’s wife soon troubled the cook. She had the comfortable smoky kitchen, with its three hearth-stones and its ample space for all comers, pulled down and a new one built. An iron box to contain fire was installed and many unnecessary instructions issued about washing pots and driving out rats. Marafu became no better than a fool. He obeyed her orders, as if he had been a woman and she a man, and waited upon her, instead of she on him. No room was left for surmise; she had undoubtedly bewitched him. Charagu and the cook were sorry for him, but they knew that they must show as much respect to his wife as to him, or else he would become very angry.

  Soon after her arrival she ordered an uncircumcised boy to help Charagu in the house, and Karanja, who had been watching for such an opportunity, was engaged at three rupees a month.

  Matu was upset about this, but he said nothing. He did not know who would herd his cattle and goats while Karanja was working for Marafu and Matu’s wives were busy in the shambas. In the old days a boy would not have dared to make such a decision for himself. He was angry, too, because a European from the Serkali had ordered all married men to pay a tax of eight rupees for every hut. Matu had handed over twenty-four rupees, dug up out of the floor of his hut. He had been told that all the rupees were finished and that something called shillings were to take their place; in fact that year’s circumcision-age had been named Shillingi, to mark the event. It was all very confusing; things were always changing and no one could tell what would happen next. Perhaps the old days, with all their raids and dangers, had been better after all.