By 1957, there were no more fighters in the forests. The Mau Mau had been defeated, but the settlers wanted the Emergency laws to continue. In 1959, eleven detainees at Hola Detention Camp were clubbed to death by black guards while white warders watched. Officials tried to cover up the killings. But the truth came out and it led to a public scandal in Britain.
The Emergency was finally ended in January 1960. The British government prepared to hand over control to a government elected by all Kenyans. In 1963, barely ten years after my story ends, Jomo Kenyatta became the first prime minister of Kenya. A year later, he became President of the independent Republic of Kenya. A British governor had called him the ‘leader to darkness and death’ and he had been imprisoned for seven years during the Emergency. But, to help bring peace to his shattered country, Kenyatta declared, ‘Let there be forgiveness… The hatred of the past should be forgotten… Let us build together in unity, not revenge.’
Although stories were passed on within families, and teachers taught Kenyan children an approved history of the struggle for independence, the Mau Mau remained a banned organization for forty more years until 2003. Even in 2005, I found that the National Museum in Nairobi had no displays of this painful past. I went in search of the Peace Museum in Nyeri. I had heard that it was a small room filled with objects, old documents and photographs donated by both rebels and loyalists. I especially wanted to see this memorial in which the stories from each side had been brought together under the same roof. However, the brave little museum no longer existed. There had been no money to keep it going.
Yet the ghosts of the past have a way of rising. In October 2006, lawyers in London launched a test case for compensation from the British government for a group of elderly Mau Mau detainees. Their claim is that torture and illegal abuse were part of the colonial policy to destroy their rebellion for independence. People are talking and writing more than ever. For years, stories have been hidden in hundreds of places… in forests and gullies, caves and homesteads, villages and towns. Many are now emerging from the undergrowth of memory, breaking the silence.
In all this, I am only the storyteller who has to believe that for Mathew, as for Mugo…
kĩrĩ ngoro kĩrutagwo na mĩario …
the word in the heart is drawn out by talking.
Glossary
asante (sana)
thank you (very much)
Swahili
ayah
nursemaid
from Hindi
boma
cattle enclosure
Swahili
bwana
master
Swahili
bwana kidogo
little master
Swahili
fez
a pot-shaped hat
Turkish
habari?
how are you?
Swahili
hapana
no
Swahili
haraka
hurry
Swahili
irio
potato, greens, maize and beans dish
Swahili
ithaka na wiyathi
land and freedom
Kikuyu
jambo (short for hujambo)
hello
Swahili
kiboko
hippopotamus
Swahili
memsahib
madam, mistress
from Hindi/Arabic
mgunga
umbrella thorn tree
Swahili
mugumo
fig tree
Kikuyu
mzungu
white person
Swahili
ndio
yes
Swahili
ndovu
elephant
Swahili
panga
machete with a broad blade
Swahili
shamba
field, plantation
Swahili
syce
groom
from Arabic
toto (short for mtoto)
child
Swahili
ugali
stiff porridge made from maize meal
Swahili
wazungu
white people
Swahili
wĩ mwega?
how are you?
Kikuyu
KIKUYU AND SWAHILI NAMES
Baba
Father
Kikuyu/Swahili
Duma
cheetah
Swahili
Gitau
(no special meaning but
identifies an age group)
Kikuyu
Husani
handsome
Swahili
Jafari
dignified
Swahili
Juma
born on a Friday
Swahili
Kamau
quiet warrior
Kikuyu
Karanja
(no special meaning)
Kikuyu
Kenyatta
from ‘tao ya kenya’ or
‘light of Kenya’;
Jomo (‘burning spear’)
Kenyatta became Kenya’s
first African premier
Swahili
Kikuyu
a people of central/southern Kenya
Kipsigi
a people of the Rift Valley
Kirinyaga
mountain of mystery
(mispronounced by
Europeans as Kenya,
hence Mount Kenya)
Kikuyu
Maina
(no special meaning but
identifies an age group)
Kikuyu
Mau Mau
underground Kikuyu
movement of resistance
against colonial rule
Mami
Mother
Kikuyu
Mugo
seer or wise man
Kikuyu
Mugo wa Kibiru
a Kikuyu prophet
Kikuyu
Muhimu
young militant activists
opposed to colonial rule
Kikuyu
Mzee
term of respect for an old man
Swahili
Ngai
God
Kikuyu
Njeri
daughter of a warrier
Kikuyu
Turkana
a people of northern Kenya
Wamai
someone who loves water
Kikuyu
Acknowledgements
In 2004 I was invited to read my work and run writing workshops in Kenya as part of the UKenya celebrations for the fortieth anniversary of Independence from Britain. My thanks for the very diverse programme go especially to librarian activist Anne Moore and to Mark Norton, Information Officer at the British High Commission. It was during this visit, with its great contrasts, that I decided I would set a novel in Kenya. I knew it would be a challenge, remembering the extraordinary power of the novels of Ngugi wa Thi’ongo that I had first experienced some forty years ago. They were novels that took me beyond myself, into a world that I had not previously imagined.
I am most grateful to all those who have spoken to me about their memories of Kenya before Independence. In addition, my special thanks go to Fred Kiranjui for his assistance on my second journey into the central Highlands. His conversations also made vivid the extreme dangers of being a Kikuyu child at that time. I am indebted to the work of many authors, including Mau Mau from Within by Donald L. Barnett and Karari Njama, ‘Mau Mau’ Detainee by Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, and Britain’ Gulag by Caroline Elkins. Space prevents me naming all the authors whose works have enlarged my understanding but my particular thanks go to David Anderson for his wide-ranging, insightful research in Histories of the Hanged.
I owe special thanks to Grace Gikonyo Kahende for her patient a
nswers to my questions and her comments on my draft. I should also like to thank Maren Bodenstein, Jill Burger, Maya Naidoo, Madeleine Lake, the Maharasingham family, Praveen Naidoo, Olusola Oyeleye and offer particular thanks to Dr Fírinne NíChréacháin and members of OYA! in North London who shared their responses with me: Winifred Opoku, Adeoba Okekunle, Nancy Khanu, Jacinta Namataka, Joldin Olympio, Uju Nicola Ufomadu.
Finally, my warmest thanks as ever go to: my editor, Jane Nissen; my agent, Hilary Delamere; and to Nandha for his constant support.
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