Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  Christians who could read the Bible said emphatically that they could find no instructions in the matter there. A belief began to spread that the missionaries had invented the whole story as part of a subtle European plot against the Kikuyu people. Many of the young men went about saying: “Ever since the beginning of the world, we Kikuyu have married more than one wife, those of us who could afford to. It is our custom, just as it is the custom of Europeans to have only one. That custom may suit them, but it does not please us at all. This is a matter we shall decide for ourselves! Let us, therefore, take two wives, or more if we are able; and if the missionaries refuse to call us Christians then let us start our own Church, with our own services to God, and with schools of our own.”

  And so the Independent Orthodox Church was founded. It had an office in Nairobi, and Karanja heard that his friend Benson Makuna was one of those on the committee who was helping to spread the movement far and wide. Benson had many powerful friends in Europe who wrote to him, and now they helped the movement with money and advice. Committees were elected in each district of the Kikuyu country and clerks and preachers were engaged. The Independents, as the followers of the movement became known, collected money from all over the country. Schools were built in several districts, and teachers were sent from headquarters. Independents could have as many wives as they were able, they could attend beer-drinks freely, and they could circumcise their daughters.

  One of Karanja’s cousins, who was clerk to the council of law at Karatina, explained all this to him, and gave him a book written by Benson Makuna to read. It seemed to Karanja that at last his problem was solved. He would become an Independent, then Kabero’s daughter Wanjiri would no longer refuse him and he could be married in the Christian way. He went to a ceremony of this kind to see what it was like. The bride covered her head with a white cloth and carried a sunshade and a bunch of flowers; she was attended by two girls dressed in the same way, and the bridegroom wore extremely smart clothes. Afterwards everyone went to a house to eat rice-cakes and tea. But it was not as easy to become an Independent as he had hoped. Although there were many teachers in the Church—young men, for the most part, who had quarrelled with the missions—no ordained preacher qualified to baptise others had yet joined.

  6

  JUST as Karanja was beginning to wonder whether he had better look for a different bride, he heard of a way out of his trouble. The Independents, he learnt, had become part of a big and powerful Church in South Africa, a distant land which he had heard of as the home of Dutchmen, and as a place where black men were cruelly oppressed by white. There had been an interchange of letters, and now the leader of this South African Church himself was on the way to confer with the Kikuyu leaders.

  This man was an Archbishop, a dignitary second to no one in importance, unless it might be King George. A number of preachers were preparing for ordination at the Archbishop’s hands. These ordained preachers would then be able to baptise as Christians the followers of the Independents, so that soon the missions, with their foolish desire to introduce European customs and their narrow-minded views on wives, could be altogether ignored. A true Kikuyu Church, unpolluted by European prejudices, would spread throughout the land until it gained control of all the schools belonging to the missions, and then European dictatorship would be at at an end.

  The visit of the Archbishop was awaited eagerly throughout the country. Everyone talked of the event. The leaders of the Independents were jubilant; even the glamour surrounding distinguished people like Benson Makuna paled beside the flame of an Archbishop’s prestige. But those who taught at the Tumu-Tumu schools, such as Crispin, opposed the Independents and looked on the visit with mistrust. It was the Devil, they said, not God, whom the Independents worshipped. Muthengi and some of the elders, also, were against them, both because they feared the Serkali’s anger and because they considered that the Church was in the hands of conceited and foolish young men whose own advancement was their chief concern.

  The Archbishop came from Nairobi in a car. He held several services in the district, attended by great crowds. Karanja went to see him, and was much impressed. His car was new and shining. He wore a black coat and trousers and a stiff black hat, and had a big beard. He preached in English, so Karanja could not understand much of what he said. But his voice was mighty, and he appeared to be a very holy man.

  Before he left it was announced that a great baptism ceremony would be held early in the morning in the Chania river and that all who wished to become Christians might attend. The possession of a number of wives, the Archbishop announced, would be no hindrance.

  On the appointed day a great crowd assembled by the river a little after dawn. Both men and women came, all young people, and while they waited in the cold beside a ford they sang Christian hymns. The elders shook their heads over the whole affair. They were afraid that the Serkali would come to arrest the Archbishop and his followers, and they were also disturbed when they heard where the baptism was to be. It was not far from the place where the serpent Ndamathia rose from the river’s depth to display itself to chosen elders on the last night of the Itwika ceremony; and the time for the generation Mwangi to pass on the secret to the generation Muirungu was drawing near. The elders feared that the snake would be angry at this sacrilege and send plague or famine to decimate the land. But the young men laughed, and ridiculed the elders for inventing such a foolish story; and one of the old men said: “Ndamathia will never show himself again. The secrets that we guard will die with our generation, for they concern things that the young men no longer wish to understand.”

  A little after sunrise the Archbishop arrived, clad for the ceremony in a long white robe. Amid shouts of greeting he waded into the cold waters where they rippled over a causeway of stones. The candidates were led out to him one by one. Two of his attendants seized each person and ducked him in the river, and the Archbishop marked the forehead of each with a cross of chalk and called on God in a loud voice to send down blessings from Heaven. Then he pronounced the new name that each candidate had selected, and the baptism was complete.

  Karanja chose the name Harrison. Becoming a Christian was not nearly so hard as he had supposed. He felt elated to think that he had at last achieved it, but a little cheated that the ceremony had been so slight and swift. Perhaps it was not yet over, he thought. This, he found, was indeed the case. As he emerged from the waters, his shirt clinging coldly to his flesh, one of the Archbishop’s attendants demanded ten shillings as the fee, and refused to return his trousers until he had paid.

  7

  NOW that Karanja was a Christian, Kabero’s daughter could no longer refuse to marry him. In any case he had made her pregnant, and her father had accepted the fine as a first instalment of the bride-price. Kabero agreed to take cash instead of beer. A long discussion took place to settle the value of the brews, which was finally agreed on as two good blankets, a barrel of honey and eighty-six shillings. Karanja drew the money from the Post Office, Ngarariga advanced him the thirty goats, and after a great feast held at Kabero’s homestead he took his bride to a hut, of the old-fashioned kind, that he and his kinsmen had built on his new piece of land.

  Karanja stayed with Wanjiri a month to break the shamba and see that all was satisfactory, and then the time came when he could delay his return no longer. He took the train from Karatina, seen off by many friends. He was reluctant to leave his new bride, who was very pleasing, and cooked well; but he had many plans for the future. His crop would be ready, now, to sell; with part of the money he would buy a small plough. Next year, perhaps, he would get a wagon as well. Crispin had given him a little seed of his best maize and of the new beans that were being grown in Kikuyu, together with the address of his brother in Nairobi who would buy vegetables, fruit and eggs.

  He could see that in future, with shambas in two places, he would make more money than ever before. But now he would have to pay the tax on his father’s two wives, as well as on two of his own
. The thought disturbed his pleasure, as a stick dragged across the bottom of a pool will stir up mud to cloud the sparkling water. Such a thing, he reflected, was exceedingly unjust. But when a well-dressed young man on the next seat, who proved to be a clerk on the way back to Nairobi, spoke to him in English, he forgot his troubles in his delight at being able to talk on equal terms with a fellow Christian and an educated man.

  8

  AT Njoro the drought had broken and the new rains had been good; everything was drenched in a deep, shining green. The goats looked fat and healthy; acacias were sprinkled with pale yellow flowers, and in the shambas women had begun their patient battle with the never-dying weeds.

  His way to Marafu’s farm lay past the club where Europeans gathered to play games with different sizes of rubber balls, and to drink their own kind of beer. To his surprise he saw a big concourse of motor-cars gathered there, and, more remarkable, many aeroplanes, some of them very big and others small enough to be children of the larger ones.

  He broke his journey to investigate, and found the largest crowd that he had ever seen at the club. People were allowed to approach close to the aeroplanes, and as he had never looked at one on the ground, he went up to a small one, painted red, belonging to a European whom he knew. He was amazed to see how small it was, and that its wings did not move like a bird’s. One day, he thought, when he was rich, he would fly to England in such a machine.

  Near the aeroplanes a man was selling tickets for fifty cents each. He shouted in a loud voice that out of every twenty tickets, one would enable the man who bought it to go up inside the aeroplane for a journey in the sky. Several young men, laughing and joking with each other, bought tickets; and Karanja, on a sudden impulse, did so too. He did not expect anything to come of it, but nevertheless he waited near the seller until all the tickets were gone. Then a European came with a piece of paper and the seller called out several numbers through a horn. Karanja looked at the number on his ticket and a moment later, to his great amazement, he heard it called out loudly by the seller.

  “Ee-i!” he exclaimed, “that is my number. Am I, then, to go in the aeroplane?”

  The European beckoned to him and he went forward slowly, not at all sure what sort of trouble he had plunged into. He had often wondered what flying was like, but now he was too frightened to want to go. But he still did not think it was possible for a Kikuyu to go in an aeroplane, so he asked: “What is going to happen, bwana?”

  “You are going into the sky,” the European, the owner of the aeroplane, replied. He gave Karanja a leather hat and showed him how to climb inside the body of the machine. Karanja hesitated, but the European laughed and said : “Why are you afraid ? It is not going to kill you.” So Karanja got in and the European tied him to the seat with a strap.

  9

  THE engine started with a roar greater than that of a motor-car stuck in the mud. Karanja felt the plane quivering beneath him as if it had been alive. In a panic he tried to climb out, but it was impossible, and no one heard his shouts. Then he felt the machine moving, and it was too late.

  At first it was just like being in a motor-car; but then, when he looked down, he saw to his dismay that the earth had left them, and was getting farther away. He could see the tops of the roofs, and people had suddenly become round and black like ticks, and far away. He shut his eyes and tried to believe that he would return alive to earth. Another panic seized him : suppose the European should decide to fly on to England? He looked over the side to reassure himself, and felt very sick. The aeroplane was going to turn over; it was tilting at a most unsafe angle. The tops of the huts were like clusters of ant-heaps; one of the homesteads must be his own. There were objects running about excitedly beneath. They looked like small black insects, but he supposed that they were women; one might even be his own wife.

  When they began to drop, his stomach went round and round and he felt even more sick. He dared not look over, for he had caught a glimpse of the earth rushing towards him and he covered his face with his hands. Then he felt the machine bumping against the earth, and presently it stopped. He jumped out, still feeling giddy, but immensely relieved to be safe. He could hardly believe that a journey in the sky could be so quickly and easily made. Driving an aeroplane could not be more difficult than driving a motor-car.

  He thanked the European, and was quickly surrounded by a crowd of people enquiring what it was like, all full of respect for his courage. As he related the story, his own admiration for his bravery grew. It had indeed been courageous to entrust himself to the European, to disappear so completely into the sky. Very few people, he felt convinced, would have done it; even the smartest clerks in Nairobi did not know what an aeroplane was like. One day, he decided, he would learn to conduct aeroplanes himself, and become driver to a European.

  He reached his homestead late that night. Everything was as he had left it, except that goats had died and others had been born, shambas had been dug and new seed planted. The logs of juniper smouldering on the fire of the thingira smelt sweet; they gave out the familiar smell of home.

  Into his wife’s hut, however, he could not enter. He had left her pregnant, and now her time had nearly come. Midwives had already entered and closed up the door. All that night no news came from it, and he began to grow anxious. Early in the morning an old mundu-mugu arrived with his bag of magic gourds over his shoulder. Karanja was angry and told him to take his devil’s medicines away; but one of the midwives darted out of the hut like an infuriated hen and drove Karanja from his own homestead. One of his goats was sacrificed, and blood sprinkled around the walls. A little later he heard four bird-like trills quavering in the bright morning sunlight above the voices of the birds. He knew that a daughter had been born.

  He was glad that God had decided to bless his wives with fertility, now that he had been baptised a Christian. The name of the child, he decided, should be Aeroplane. His wife, he thought, would never be able to pronounce such a difficult word; but educated people would know, and understand.

  THE END

  *First published in the Financial Times in 1998. I am extremely happy that Penguin Books have risen to the challenge issued here.

  * Masai villages.

  * Cultivated land.

  * A magical practitioner.

  * Ceremonial uncleanliness, generally resulting from the breach of some prohibition, or of contact with some unclean person or thing.

  * Hut for men only.

  * Senior warriors, members of the warriors’ council, responsible for enforcing law and order.

  * A game played with round counters, such as beans, and two rows of holes in the ground. It is widespread throughout Africa, and involves such complicated feats of mental arithmetic that few Europeans can play it.

  * Large shallow iron bowls, shaped like basins, and often used for carrying earth.

  * A large, lance-shaped knife, introduced by Europeans and widely used for digging, weeding, cutting and other purposes.

  * Spanish ‘flu.

  * Local Native Council.