In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  But given its colorful presence at Alliance, it was easy to forget that the movement was born during the defense of the British Empire in Africa. Scouting started in Kenya in 1910, three years after Lord Baden-Powell founded the movement at Brownsea, near Dorset, in England. Initially it was confined to Europeans and Indians, but the first African troop was officially recognized by the HQ in Nairobi in 1929.

  I joined the scout movement in 1956 and vowed to do my best to fulfill my duty to God and queen, help other people at all times, and obey the scout law. I learned that a scout was loyal; useful and helpful to others; brother to every other scout; courteous; a friend to all, including animals; and was thrifty and clean in thought, word, and deed. He smiled and whistled under all difficulties and obeyed orders of authority without question. A scout’s honor was to be trusted. Although the bit about the queen was difficult to swallow, the promises were not at odds with Alliance, my religious fellowship, or my upbringing. Values of frugality, doing the maximum with the minimum, and not despairing in difficult situations but trying to figure a way out appealed to me. Among the many skills of survival we learned, knots occupied an important place. I knew some of them by their Gĩkũyũ names, but in English, names like bowline, square knot, and sheet bend made the knots sound extraordinarily difficult to master. Ironically, this helped me to not take my knowledge for granted or think that I knew all the knots there were to know.

  Scouts: James Mathenge (on left) and Ngũgĩ (on right)

  Aside from being instructive, scouting was fun. I enjoyed camping at Rowallan in Nairobi, making trips to Ngong Hills for a magnificent view of the Great Rift Valley, and journeying to Hell’s Gate for the incredible sight of hot steam springing from the bowels of the earth. In October 1956 Princess Margaret visited Kenya, which led to a particularly memorable scouting experience. I was among a party of fifty boys and twenty scouts who went to Nairobi to line the streets, waving small Union Jacks as the slow-moving motorcade wound its way around the stadium. As scouts, we were better positioned to get a glimpse of the passing princess. But it was the milling crowd of children waving the flag that left the biggest impression.

  * See Dreams in a Time of War.

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  My most memorable scouting experience, however, was the 1957 jamboree at the graveyard of Lord Baden-Powell for the centennial celebration of his birth. Accompanied by three teachers, Omondi, Ogutu, and Smith, as well as Mrs. Smith, twenty-four scouts left at seven a.m. on Friday, February 22, in the school truck. Past Nairobi, every new name of place—Ruiru, Juja, Mang’u, Thika—sounded magical. At the Blue Post Hotel we crossed the bridge over the Chania. It was the biggest river I had ever seen in my life. Even more breathtaking was the roaring waterfall to our right, but this was only the beginning of the wonders. As we drove through Murang’a, then Fort Hall, I was held captive by the landscape of ridges and deep valleys that lay together in parallel. On the slopes, one could spot people walking two or three cows along dusty paths to find grass, while others worked in the fields of corn.

  Ngũgĩ (on right) with Johana Mwalwala (on left) hiking in Ngong Hills, 1956. Below is the Great Rift Valley.

  Ngũgĩ at Hell’s Gate, Naivasha, 1956. Behind are the natural hot springs.

  We zigzagged up and down the slopes, ridge to ridge, till we reached a small plain along which meandered the Thagana River, said to originate from Mount Kenya to join other streams to become the Tana River, which flows all the way to the coast and the Indian Ocean. Thereafter it was another climb toward Karatina, famous for its wartime agriculture that aided the British war economy but where, after the war, the advanced processing plants were razed to the ground to prevent Africans from competing with white settlers. One or two miles later we were in Nyeri town, then the capital of Central Province. I had always been drawn to thick forests, rugged rocks, and other natural sculptures, but the landscape between Murang’a and Nyeri left a lasting impression, years later to appear as the fictional landscape in my first novel, The River Between. The images that would later launch my novel-writing efforts were thus formed on my way to honor Baden-Powell.

  In the afternoon, we took part in what was dubbed an Asante rally, a thank-you affair to the memory of Baden-Powell, an incredible assembly of boys of all races from all parts of the country and the world. The sheer magnitude of the crowd of secular worshippers of this iconic figure was itself a sight to cherish, remember, and reflect upon, a vision of peace and cooperation across races dreamed up amid the carnage of another colonial war.

  For me, Nyeri was not about Baden-Powell alone; in my heart, it was also about the native-born Dedan Kĩmathi and Stanley Mathenge and the other larger-than-life guerrillas from Nyeri who were coping with survival in a real forest, unlike those of us who were choosing to learn survival skills only to affirm our loyalty to God, queen, and colonial authority.

  Kenya Scouts Jamboree at Nyeri Showground, 1957: Ngũgĩ (on left); Kenneth Mbũgua (on right) at the February 23 Asante rally in honor of Baden-Powell

  Once, trying to push my way through the milling crowd without losing sight of the Alliance contingent, I bumped into Kenneth Mbũgua, my Limuru childhood friend. What a coincidence! We spent some time together and even posed for pictures, our scout’s knives hanging from our belts. We discussed everything, from our experiences in scouting to books we had read. It was always a treat to argue with Kenneth about books, for it stretched the limits of our understanding in the frantic search for reinforcements to buttress our side of the argument.

  It was inevitable that Kenneth and I would resume our eternal dispute about the license to write. This time I was not as aggressive in my rejoinders, curious about the progress of his own book. He appreciated the comments I had made about simple sentences and the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon word. Goodwill established, I tried to press my advantage toward, well, my first convert. I knew his obstinacy too well to approach the subject directly. I had to be circumspect as I slipped into my Jesus-is-my-personal-savior mode, still trying to snag my first catch. He could learn from the Bible, I told him, more than simple words of its language. But Kenneth proved skeptical and did not fall for my sly attempts to move from English language structure to soul restructuring. His soul remained stuck to his sinful body the way his characters remained stuck in the city, probably victims of police raids and their own sins.

  Eventually our talk drifted from books and salvation, about which we never seemed to agree, to life in the new village. We were struck by the fact that, living in the same congested village, we hardly ever met the way we used to in the old homestead. Ever since the loss of the old homestead, I had been haunted by the melancholy of the new. We lived in the same village, but we were a collection of strangers, lonely villagers. It may have arisen from my yearning for something, anything to make me feel at home in the new, but increasingly I found myself troubled by the lack of any social activity that could bring the youth of the new village together. Kenneth expressed the same feeling. Maybe we who had had the benefit of a high school education and teacher training could lead the way and contribute something to help the community discover its soul. Kenneth seemed to warm to the idea of contributing to a community spirit more than he had to that of rescuing his own.

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  The challenge of forging a togetherness among the youth of the new villages would not leave my mind. When later I went back to Kamĩrĩthũ on April 18 for the first break of the year, I started contacting Limuru boys and girls now in high school, and those in the last years of their primary, to explore ways in which we might work together. This took me to many homes in the different parts of Kamĩrĩthũ and in neighboring villages. I began to connect with the different families of the old homestead while also discovering and making contact with new families. Instead of the melancholy I had seen reflected in the canopy of smoke over the village, I began to see the buoyant spirit of youth rising, expressing itself in many little things: walks in the narrow streets; informal gatherings in corners;
occasional dancing in people’s homes.

  I returned to Alliance for the second term, a little bit more at ease with the new village. On the next Nairobi Saturday, I invited Allan Ngũgĩ, the famous editor of SEP, to come home with me, and he loved the novelty and the challenge of walking ten miles on foot. We found my mother at home. She roasted some potatoes for us, and afterward Allan confided that they were some of the best he had ever eaten. His appreciation was like an embrace of one of the most constant images in my life. My mother’s roast had come to symbolize continuity despite the many changes in my life. Her last roast at the foot of the Mugumo tree and the talk that ensued about adding on to a story would be imprinted in my mind for years to come; it had already affected my attitude toward the village.

  There was not a single mishap, the first time on a return to the village that a calamity had not befallen me. On our way back, I could appreciate the joy of walking and talking, without a memory of terror or anxiety of being late to school. It was amid our talk of different futures, immersed in many topics, that an idea of how best to carry out the Baden-Powell spirit in Kamĩrĩthũ stole into my consciousness: instead of a scout troop, why not a debating club, where the youth of the village would receive and add to the story?

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  The debating society at Alliance was one of the oldest student clubs, started in 1939. The first motion, Should Germany’s colonial claims be accepted by Britain? was an ironic case of the colonized debating the merits of rival imperialisms and presumably taking sides. But this started a tradition of the society tackling political themes. Good debaters were instant heroes, especially when it came to interschool contests. Such was the case involving the fourth-year Kĩmani Nyoike and his Kagumo counterpart, Paul Mwema. I was in my first year, part of the crowd that went to witness two obstinate giants go at each other with relentless verbal onslaughts, vying for our attention and allegiance. They talked without notes, fluently. Where did people get the courage to stand before such a crowd and air their views? I would ask myself, time and again, mesmerized.

  When finally, on another occasion, I contributed to a debate, the question of courage did not arise. Western Education has done more harm than good in Africa was the motion. As the proponents and opponents continued, I felt that frivolity was winning out over the seriousness the subject demanded. I recalled all the talks I used to have with Ngandi about education, land, and religion. I raised my hand. As the debates were then mostly dominated by third and fourth years, the intervention of a first year raised eyebrows and curiosity. I did not have the eloquence of words and smoothness in delivery, but I had the clarity of passion. I held a pencil in the air. All eyes were fixed on it. I told a story. A person comes to your house. He takes your land. In exchange he gives you a pencil. Is this fair exchange? I would rather he kept his pencil and I kept my land. It was a huge effort. I sat down, breathless. The applause that followed told me the analogy had worked. It might even have helped swing the debate in favor of the motion. Of course, the contradiction was clear: all of us, for and against the motion, were at Alliance in pursuit of the Western education we had censured. But I learned the power of images in clarifying complex relations. Additionally, my intervention made an impression on the leadership of the debating society.

  I became an avid participant in debates, if without that same kind of impact. Over the years, however, a few others and I became increasingly critical of the format. I felt that too many in the audience were passive; something was missing. When I became part of the leadership of the debating society, we discussed how we could inject drama into the sessions. I wanted consistent fire, or at least sparks, and it could only come from audience involvement. Our inspiration came from the Legislative Council.

  Established in 1907, Legco was initially a completely white affair, with debates on such issues as eggs and plumes of ostriches: people were not allowed to take eggs from natural nests or capture natural ostriches, to protect licensed ostrich farmers. There were also, of course, more sinister debates to forge laws that consolidated Kenya as a white man’s country.

  Alliance had a long history of contact with this august institution. Even before the school was founded, its backers were closely associated with it. Dr. John W. Arthur, a missionary and a central player in the Alliance of Missions that had set up the school, was appointed representative of African interests. He guarded his status as the African voice jealously and was horrified that nationalists like Harry Thuku and Jomo Kenyatta would want to set up their own political organizations instead of joining the loyal associations that Dr. Arthur organized. He was a kindly person and obviously dedicated to his mission, but he acted as if he knew Africans better than they knew themselves. It was not until 1944 that the government appointed the first African representative of African interests, Eliud Mathu, Alliance class of 1928 and later a teacher there. Students, too, were involved in the colonial body: whenever a new session of the Legco opened, the school sent two boys as ushers. In 1955 it was Peter Mburu, of the debating society, and Bethuel A. Kiplagat, our Dorm Two prefect.

  By 1957 Mburu and Kiplagat had left Alliance, so there was nobody in the committee with any personal experience of the legislative procedure. But we knew that it was modeled on the British Houses of Parliament, which we had studied in class, and we decided to change our debating format into our interpretation of the Parliamentary system. The dining hall became our parliament. The chair, a mallet of authority in his hand, became Speaker of the House. The audience would constitute ordinary members of Parliament, evenly divided between the government and the opposition. Once the principal proponents and opponents had spoken, it was the floor’s turn. But they could not make a statement directly. They could only ask questions so as to expose holes in the position of the mover or that of the opposition, or help beef up any of the earlier responses. Skillful questions and follow-ups could really bring out contradictions in the positions of the speakers. If an ordinary member of the house disagreed profoundly with the position of either side, he would demonstrate this by crossing the floor. Whether they spoke or not, everybody was a participant. The constant to-and-fro across the aisle created drama, the crossings often greeted with clashing calls of shame or welcome, keeping the speaker constantly busy with his mallet.

  Soon the Franciscan binary grouping of political actors into statesmen and scoundrels entered the lexicon of the debates. Initially the words provoked laughter because everybody knew that they were a good-humored dig at Carey Francis, but later they took on a life of their own, becoming descriptions of radical versus conservative positions. Scoundrels were more popular than statesmen, providing more drama with their extreme though often frivolous questioning, drawing applause, whistles, and boos from the audience. The speaker would call out order, order, lecturing the audience on parliamentary decorum and threatening to have the recalcitrant ejected by the sergeant at arms. One speaker always prefaced his answers with the Churchillian phrase As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted. And on another occasion: Do you realize, sir, that your answer is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma? Thereafter speakers outdid one another in borrowing phrases from politicians in and outside the country.

  Two debates stood out under the new format. If you want peace, prepare for war was the motion, which I was to move. Although I did not believe strongly in the proposition, rhetoric was more important than personal conviction. My main thesis was that if a people don’t prepare for war, they become an easy target for the warlike, while those who prepare have a means of defending themselves. Then one could negotiate peace from a position of strength. Arming oneself acted as a deterrent, as in the Cold War between America and Russia. I concluded with the Machiavellian maxim Hence it is that all armed prophets have prospered and all unarmed have perished, a kind of Dawa ya moto ni moto. With more people crossing the floor to our side, we were clearly winning. The warrior seemed to inspire more awe and admiration than the peacemaker.

  But a peacemaker inte
rvened at a strategic moment. You harvest what you plant. You don’t plant potatoes and expect to harvest corn. If you want war, prepare for war. If you want peace, prepare for peace. When my turn came to summarize, I could not put the slightest dent in that graphic image.

  All in all, our interpretation of the parliamentary system worked for our needs, livening up the debates. Little did I know that a few years later the format would intervene in my life in the most unexpected of ways.

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  The August break, which began on July 31, brought good news to our family. My brother’s wife, Charity Wanjiki, came home from Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, and we learned that Good Wallace had been relocated to the last post on the pipeline, literally next door to our village.

  The pipeline was the system the colonial state had devised for releasing those held in the concentration camps. Those who refused to cooperate with their interrogators, despite attempts to break them with words or torture, remained held in the harshest camps; those who showed degrees of cooperation were moved in stages, until they were finally released to the camp nearest their home, before their reentry into the concentration villages. My brother was deemed cooperative after declaring that he had accepted Jesus as the ruler of his life. Good Wallace had never seen any contradiction between Christian values and those of liberation. As far back as I could remember, he had read the Bible avidly and regularly attended Sunday services at the African Orthodox Church before it was banned.