In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  His story, about a boy who goes to Nairobi to find work to pay school tuition for himself and his two siblings but gets lost in the corruption of the city, was captivating but too short. Immediately I noted a serious flaw in the telling: he used big words and long sentences. Before, I would have been impressed by the weight of his vocabulary, but now I looked at his work through Smith’s eyes. Indeed, Smith’s call for us to learn from the example of the English prose in the Bible must have left a mark. The King James–authorized version remained one of my favorite reads. I learned to mix the simple, the compound, and the complex for different effects.

  Give me some more pages, I wrote back to Kenneth. But don’t use big words. Read the Bible again and see how English is used. I was about to write that Jesus spoke simple English but caught myself. Still, Smith had given me my first critical tool for evaluating a piece of work.

  7

  From English literature, history, and geography, we learned new words, titles, facts, and names. From the physics and chemistry labs, it was the vocabulary of beakers, gases, elements, and compounds. H2O became our new name for water: will you pass some H2O, please?

  I liked physics and chemistry but was often intimidated by the other students, who performed being scientists and talked knowingly with the teachers. I was more intrigued by the magical, alchemistic behavior of elements when mixed or heated together: Why should invisible hydrogen and oxygen make water? for instance. The elements were possessed of spirits. But could I ask my teachers about them?

  Biology labs, with their plants in pots and glasses and dead frogs, mice, millipedes, and insects preserved in formaldehyde, smelled of hospitals and death. I gazed at them and imagined them coming back to life and chasing us out of the lab, or simply running away, into the grassy courtyard outside. I grew up surrounded by wild nature. The Manguo marshes were awash with varieties of life: bloodsucking leeches; frogs in their different formations of eggs, legless and legged tadpoles, and young frogs; and birds that laid eggs in the reeds. There was probably a similar variety in the nearby Ondiri marshes. We should have studied them rather than plants isolated in pots or frogs and insects trapped in formaldehyde. Though the labs opened new worlds and made me look differently at the hitherto ordinary, I found the life in books of literary imagination more fascinating than that in history books and scientific laboratories.

  8

  Allan Ogot, my first math teacher, was tall and exuded confidence and authority. The terms he taught us, theorem, proof, and QED, became catchwords: statements like The square of the hypotenuse of a triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, or A squared plus B squared equals C squared, would often crop up in ordinary conversation. They sounded so learned and profound. In his uniform of a scoutmaster, Ogot looked even more imposing and learned. At morning and evening chapel, he gave sermons that were more a soaring challenge to the mind than a roaring call for the soul to fly or hide in shame, surprising us with a more complex English vocabulary than his white counterparts. But it was outside the classroom and the chapel, in a nonteaching setting, that he made the most lasting impression on me. He was not even aware of it. He was standing in the open grass quadrangle, talking to another teacher or a student. He held a book in his hands, and my eyes fell on the title: Tell Freedom by Peter Abrahams. I was transfixed. The words seemed to speak of a world beyond the walls of the Alliance.

  Maybe I could have gathered the courage to ask if he could lend me the copy, but I never got around to it, and in August he left for college studies in Scotland. But years later, when I again came across Peter Abrahams and discovered South African literature, I remembered Allan Ogot, standing on the grounds of Alliance High School, silently delivering a sermon through a book title: Tell Freedom. That silence was more soaring than any sermon he had given in the chapel and more dazzling than any of the Euclidian theorems.

  This would become a pattern in my intellectual growth: passing comments and fleeting images, often outside the formal classroom, would leave a lasting, sometimes pivotal mark on my life.

  9

  Life was not all mystery and excitement in the sanctuary. One day I was standing alone outside the dining hall when a boy hailed me and stretched out his hand in greeting. When I stretched out mine to grasp his, he quickly withdrew and called out, Jigger, who do you think you are? I tried to walk past him, but he blocked my way, calling me mono. Finally he let me pass, telling me to mind my manners when speaking to my superiors. It was brutal, humiliating in its total unexpectedness.

  In the dining room, I sought out Kenneth Wanjai, a fellow Limurian. Wanjai and I had not known each other well back home, but Alliance had brought us together. He sat beside another student, Leonard Mbũgua, both of them a class ahead of me. They laughed at first, wondering how it was that I had not yet encountered this tradition of harassing freshmen.

  They recounted, with relish, stories of newcomers made to wash clothes for their superiors, beaten and driven to sleep in the bush at night, made to give up their entire rations of food, actually burned in front of a fire for refusing to part with their … They stopped and laughed, seeing my wide-open eyes. The fire bit was a bit of extra spice, they confessed. That was a long time ago, even before our time, Wanjai reassured me. Besides, I am in Form Two. My friend here and I will protect you.

  Their vows of protection did not carry much conviction: they themselves bullied others and were not averse to silencing me with the hated word mono when I was winning arguments. I realized that I had to rely on my wits for survival. I seemed to have attracted the evil spirit in the boy who had accosted me. His name, I came to learn, was Benaya Majisu, and I had the bad luck of always encountering him in the most unexpected places. He would ask me to stop, nicely, his palms clasped together as if in prayer, and I would oblige, thinking that he had mellowed, that this time he would apologize. Then he would start opening and closing his palms and would order me to open and shut my mouth to the rhythm of his palm movements. He seemed frustrated when I refused, and I became his challenge. If a prefect or any other person passed by, he would look like innocence itself. Infuriatingly, I had nowhere to turn for restitution. Who did one complain to that another student had asked one to open and close one’s mouth as quickly as he opened and closed his palms? He was very careful not to touch me physically, so there was nothing I could do, really, but avoid him. In reality, as I came to learn later, he was nice and gentle, playing the bully more than being the bully.

  Kĩambu students at Alliance High School, 1955: Kĩmani Nyoike (lying down on right front), Ngũgĩ (second row, third from left, sitting down), Moses Gathere (first from left, middle row), Kenneth Wanjai (fourth from left, back row)

  In the dorms, newcomers were monos and jiggers, to be put in their place, seen not heard. The worst bullies came from Form Two, doing to the freshmen what had been done to them the previous year. I found it strange that the most recent victims of bullying would be the worst perpetrators of that which they used to vehemently lament. I never understood the pleasure of humiliating another, least of all one weaker than oneself. I vowed that when I got to Form Two, I would not bully the newcomers, a promise to myself that I kept.

  10

  After some weeks, life settled into a routine. Monday to Friday were taken up by classes and other school-related activities. But on Saturday afternoons, after morning chores, many students added shoes and stockings to their uniform of khaki shorts and blue tie and left the school premises. Those who lived in the neighborhood went home, and the others would trek to the Indian shops at Kikuyu.

  The town was originally a railway depot, set up in 1898, and as in similar depots, the Indians were the commercial frontiersmen, supplying the army of railroad workers and officials with food, clothes, and transport. The depot acquired a life of its own, which continued even after the railway construction had moved on.

  I did not venture off the Alliance grounds in the first few weeks. I was not particularly eager to revis
it Kikuyu station; I did not need a reminder of how I first came there smuggled on a goods train. But one Saturday, Wanjai and Leonard Mbũgua invited me to join them, and I felt it was time I dared to step out of the compound.

  It was not a long walk. The legendary marshes of Ondiri were on our left, inducing in me the same awe I felt when reading and hearing stories about them. When we arrived in Kikuyu, our uniforms distinguished us from the rest of the population, as though the Indian shopkeepers and African shoppers were the natives to our explorers.

  At the shopping center, however, I realized that our matching khaki hid a difference: I had followed Wanjai and the others blindly, thinking it was simply a walk to town, a bit of window shopping, and then another walk back. But when they started buying things, our equality fell apart. I did not have any money to spend and resorted to what I used to do in my previous schools when I had no lunch: I detached myself from the herd and went on my own. The shops looked like those in Limuru: draperies, with the owner behind the counter wearing a long tape measure around his neck; groceries, with the seller seated on a high stool, chewing leaves and ordering his assistants about; and others that specialized in varieties of food and candy arranged in bins. Even a cup of tea or the cheapest candy was beyond my means. I would have gone back to school, but I did not want to walk the distance alone.

  Seeing some other freshmen walking toward me, holding their mandazis and other goodies, I ducked into the veranda of the nearest shop to let them pass. As I was about to go back into the street, a voice called out my name. I turned around, to find an African tailor smiling at me. I thought you were coming in just to greet me! he said as he shook my hand warmly. Don’t you remember me? It was Igogo, the boy who had been teased out of school way back in our Kamandũra days simply because his name meant Crow.* He was now a man, a tailor, renting a Singer sewing machine from the Indian shopkeeper and taking home his profits. We chatted about the good old days, skirting around the harassment that had driven him out of school. Your success is ours as well, he told me, giving me coins to buy myself something to eat, apologizing that he could not leave the shop to join me. Whenever you are around, you must come into the shop and tell me how you are, he said. Perhaps I shall be free and then we can have tea together. I was truly grateful. I bought some candy, and pride restored, I sought out Wanjai and Mbũgua so we could walk back to school in time for evening meal, the deadline for return.

  Suddenly I saw people running away in all directions. I had seen this before in Limuru: it was a raid. African soldiers under the command of their white officers, all armed and in camouflage, jumped out of military jeeps that had appeared from nowhere and ran after those disappearing behind shops, shouting a menacing cacophonous mixture of Lala chini! Mikono juu! Soon the raiders were all over the small town, herding people into groups. But wonders will never cease. Our Alliance uniform was a magic veil: the hounds did not even seem to see us. Still, we felt safe only after we were back in the sanctuary.

  * I have told his story in Dreams in a Time of War.

  11

  Life at school continued to be a series of discoveries. There was, for instance, the hierarchy and mystery of the prefect system, which was almost a mirror image of the colonial administration. The faculty may have been masters of our academic life, but it was through the prefects that the principal ruled the school. The senior class, successors and inheritors of those who had left last year, seemed to float on an intellectual cloud in an unattainable heaven. They walked, talked, and looked as if their bodies carried the weight of pure knowledge.

  The deeds of those who had left, their antics, their exploits, their successes, even their very names, were the stuff of legends. Among those who had gone before us was Henry Kuria, who had written and directed a play in Kiswahili, Nakupenda Lakini … I love you but … The production, an all-students’ affair, was first staged at Alliance and then taken to the community beyond. Kuria was also the founder and organizer of the Kĩambu Musical Festival for elementary schools in the district, and he accomplished all of this during the state of emergency.

  It sounded like something out of a storybook, but the music festival had carried on after him and, in 1955, would be performed across the valley, at the Church of Torch. It was within walking distance, so I made the trip. The singing extravaganza by students uniformed in the different colors of the select elementary schools made a big impression on my mind. The legend himself was present as the guest of honor, but he sat too far in front for me to see him. It did not matter, though: he was real.

  The 1955 festival was organized by Kuria’s successor, Kĩmani Nyoike, now in his fourth year at Alliance. Kĩmani also followed in Kuria’s literary footsteps by writing and producing a play, Maisha ni Nini, or What Is Life? performed to a boisterous full house in April. Already known for his debating skills, Kĩmani also played the leading role in his play. He was writer, orator, and actor, three talents in one body.

  My previous experiences of staged performance were the improvised comic skits at Manguo Elementary School. Maisha ni Nini, the first full-length play I saw, was on a scale and level far beyond anything that I had previously encountered. Added to the Kuria legend, it was the foundation for my lifelong respect for students’ efforts and for my own interest in theater.

  12

  First term was coming to a close, and I had already been changed immeasurably. Still, I did not quite feel that I belonged to Alliance. It was not only because the bullies continued to put us in our place at every opportunity; I also hadn’t made a significant mark on anything. Intellectually, I was always mindful that the twenty others in the A stream had performed better than me, and even within my B stream, I could not tell where I stood. But despite this dislocation, I was caught by the fever that now seized the whole school. Exams! I did not have to be told that they were coming: I saw it in the sudden change of behavior. Students, everywhere, buried their heads in books, even the bullies.

  My anxiety increased as Tuesday, April 5, the first day of exams, approached. After the last exam on Thursday, I felt even more crestfallen. The way the other boys talked of their performances discouraged me, especially when I compared the answers they so assertively claimed were correct with what I could recall of my own responses.

  But when the results finally came, Henry Chasia, myself, and Hiram Karani, in that order, were at the top of both streams. I would move to A stream. The fact that I had done well in all subjects, even in the sciences, boosted my self-confidence. The students who had intimidated me, who could say, by rote, many of the theorems and formulas, had not done as well as their showy confidence had led me to expect.

  So when the school assembly broke on April 21, the formal end of the first term, I had every reason to look forward to a triumphant return to my village. I felt differently about myself. My exam results had assured me that I was now truly an Alliance student. My uniform of khaki shorts and shirt, blue tie, shoes, and long socks announced the fact to the outside. The pass the school had issued me would confirm it to any inquisitive government agents. The image of bloodhounds panting at the gates, waiting to pounce on me, had faded into the background. Alliance would protect me from harm. Nothing prepared me, then, for the desolation of my village and the melancholy collection of mushrooms called Kamĩrĩthũ.

  13

  Villagization, the innocuous name the colonial state gave to the forced internal displacement, was sprung on the Kenyan people in 1955, in the middle of my first term at Alliance, but living within the walls of the school, I had not heard about the agents of the state bulldozing people’s homes or torching them when the owners refused to participate in the demolition. Mau Mau suspects or not, everybody had to relocate to a common site. In some regions, the state forced people to dig a moat around the new collective settlement, leaving only one exit and entrance. The whole of central Kenya was displaced, and the old order of life destroyed, in the name of isolating and starving the anticolonial guerrillas in the mountains.

>   The mass relocation was followed by forced land consolidation. A person or families who owned parcels of land in different locations would have them joined together into a contiguous piece but had no choice over the location of this consolidated land. People in the mountains and the concentration camps were not there to verify their claims. It was a mass fraud, often giving land from the already poor to the relatively rich, and from the families of guerrilla fighters to those loyal to the colonial state.

  Local Gĩkũyũ residents leaving Kamĩrĩthũ home guard post, having been forced there overnight for “protection” against Mau Mau attack, but really to prevent them from feeding Mau Mau fighters under the cover of night

  The division between the loyal and everyone else was reflected in the architecture of the new village. The loyal occupied corner houses of corrugated iron roofs with ample space between them, while those deemed disloyal, the majority of the landless and poor, lived in mud-walled grass-thatched round huts, with hardly any space between them. The loyal household was likely to be Christian, relatively wealthy, better educated, with the nuclear family of father, mother, and children left intact. The peasant and worker households were usually just mothers and children.

  The new villages were the rural equivalent of the concentration camps, where thousands were still being held, with more additions every year, since the Declaration of Emergency in 1952. The inmates of the concentration camps were mostly men, those in the concentration villages mostly women and children. These two sets of concentration had many features in common.