Burn My Heart

Beverley Naidoo grew up in South Africa under apartheid. She says: ‘As a white child I didn’t question the terrible injustices until I was a student. I decided then that unless I joined the resistance, I was part of the problem.’ Beverley Naidoo was detained without trial when she was twenty-one and, in the following year, came into exile in England where she has since lived. Her first children’s book,
Journey to Jo’burg
, was banned in South Africa until 1991, but it was an eye-opener for hundreds of thousands of readers elsewhere. In
Chain of Fire
,
No Turning Back
and
Out of Bounds
(short stories with a Foreword by Archbishop Tutu) there are extraordinary challenges for young people, black and white, caught in an oppressive society that she describes as ‘more dangerous than any fantasy’. She has won many awards for her writing, including the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the Nestlé Smarties Silver Award for
The Other Side of Truth
about two refugee children smuggled to London who also feature in
Web of Lies.
She has written picture books and plays, and has two honorary doctorates as well a doctorate in education.

beverleynaidoo.com

Books by Beverley Naidoo

Burn My Heart Chain of Fire Journey to Jo’Burg No Turning Back Out of Bounds The Other Side of Truth The Great Tug of War Web of Lies

‘If you don’t stop that, the Mau Mau will come to get you!’

Anyone who was a child in Britain in the 1950s will probably remember hearing about the Mau Mau. The stories were frightening and, yes, some parents used the name as a threat… even though the Mau Mau were 4,000 miles away in Kenya.

These two words that alarmed many people in Britain, for at least ten years, then seem to have disappeared. They no longer made news. They hardly appeared even in history books. So what was this all about? Why the silence? With the scent of something secret, the detective in me became curious. I grew up in South Africa, 2,000 miles further south of Kenya, and there too we had many secrets.

So just a few words of history before the story begins…

Many Africans fought alongside British soldiers during the Second World War. Many of them died in the name of freedom. After the war, Africans declared that it was about time that they had their own freedom in their own countries. But the white settlers in Kenya refused even to share power. These
wazungu,
as they were called by Africans
(mzungu
for one white person), demanded that the country stay in
British hands. They insisted that Africans were like children, not ready for independence. When the African leader Jomo Kenyatta called for land, education, freedom, decent wages and equality, they called him a dangerous agitator. To most settlers, ‘good’ Africans were those who were loyal to them and the colony.

Kikuyus led the fiercest resistance. It was their fertile land in the highlands that the
wazungu
had taken for their farms. Many younger Kikuyus became impatient with older leaders like Kenyatta. They wanted action. A movement grew that became known as the Mau Mau. It was a secret society whose members took oaths and swore to fight unto death to get back their land. Any Kikuyu who was seen to help the white settlers was hated as much as the ‘uninvited guests’. This story begins in the year before the State of Emergency. While the setting is real, my characters are all imagined.

‘The fence is broken! Over here, Mugo!’

Mathew lifted the straggling barbed wire with the barrel of his gun. The other end remained attached to one of Father’s new wooden posts. It was the bottom strand nearest the ground. Above it, row upon row of barbed wire stretched taut and intact, almost twice his height, between him and the bush. The new fence felt like a cage. The old fence had only reached his chest and its sagging wires had been easy for him and Mugo to push apart. Weak like old skin, Mugo had once said.

Careful not to touch the barbs, Mathew pinched the wire between his finger and thumb. He studied it. It hadn’t come loose by itself. The other half hung from the adjoining post. It had been split in the middle. Sensing an adventure, Duma barked. Before he thought to stop her, Duma had stretched herself out and snuffled her way through the gap.
From the other side, she wagged her long copper tail at Mathew like a crazy feather duster. It would be difficult for a grown person to slip underneath. If the wire had been deliberately cut, why only the bottom wire?

Mathew squatted, his new Red Ryder rifle tucked under his arm. The blue-steel barrel of the gun pointed down. The hard tawny earth gave nothing away, or had Duma already swept away the evidence? Mathew frowned up towards Mugo, his speckled green eyes squinting against the sun.

‘See any tracks?’

Mugo’s jet-black eyes scoured the clumps of rough grey grass either side of the fence before he shook his head.

‘Hapana… nothing.’

Mathew trusted Mugo’s eyes to pick out the tiniest detail. Mugo was already thirteen, two years older than Mathew. His name even meant ‘seer’. Before coming to work in the kitchen, he had been a herd boy. He knew all about the surrounding bush beneath their mountain.

‘What did it, Mugo? An animal?’

‘Hapana.’ No. Not animal. Mugo shook his head again.

‘People?’

Mugo said nothing. In the sun his cheeks glistened like the smooth polished walnut stock of Mathew’s gun. But his forehead creased with worry lines.
Mathew followed the direction of Mugo’s gaze to a whistling thorn tree on the other side of the fence. Had something snagged there on one of its long jagged spikes?

‘I’m going to see,’ Mathew announced.

Mugo sprang to life. ‘Hapana, young bwana! Your father will be angry!’

‘I’m only going to those trees.’

‘Hapana! We must tell the bwana about the fence!’ Mugo urged.

‘He’s gone out, Mugo,’ Mathew retorted impatiently.

‘Then we must tell –’

‘Juma? His mother is sick and he’s gone to see her. Father said he could.’ Juma was Father’s new foreman. Mathew grinned rather smugly. ‘Don’t worry, Mugo! We’ll sort it out.’

‘We can tell my father!’ Mugo argued earnestly. He pointed to the blue gum trees in the direction of the stables, his fingers jabbing the air as if shocked by a bolt of electricity. Mugo’s father, Kamau, was in charge of the stables.

‘We’ll do that but we’ve plenty of time to get someone to mend it before tonight. I just want to check if something’s there.’

Before Mugo could reply, Mathew pushed his gun through the gap in the fence, flattened himself and began crawling. As long as he didn’t go far and stay too long, why should Father ever
know? He felt a little surge of pleasure at his defiance.

The bush on the other side was part of their land, all the way to the river. It extended far downstream into the plains and upstream through the thickly wooded lower slopes of Mount Kenya. ‘Grayson country’, as Mathew’s grandfather used to call it. According to his mother, even as a toddler, Mathew used to beg the ayah who looked after him to let him go into the bush. However, her instructions were to keep him inside the fence. But by the time he was four, Mathew had latched on to Kamau who was responsible for Father’s white stallion and who had worked on the Grayson farm since he was a boy himself.

With young Mathew’s nagging and begging, Kamau was given permission to lead the child on a pony to the nearest stretch of river when he wasn’t too busy. When Mathew could manage the pony himself, Kamau would ride beside him. One of his best feelings in the world was being perched at the top of the ridge early in the morning from where the two of them would watch wildlife come to drink in the water below. Kamau knew every animal and Mathew had never tired of listening to his stories.

Kamau’s younger son, Mugo, had been one of the Grayson’s herd boys until the day he had saved
Mathew from a deadly snake. Mathew, then six, had been with Father on his rounds to check that all the cattle were fenced inside the bomas before sundown. They had to be kept safe at night from lions and hyenas, even the occasional leopard from the mountain. Mathew had found an anthill near the entrance to a boma and begun poking it with a stick. Suddenly a black mamba had slithered out, rearing its head. If sharp-eyed Mugo hadn’t yanked him away, its poison could have killed him within minutes. Father had praised Mugo for reacting so smartly and, soon afterwards, he was brought to work in the Grayson’s kitchen.