Green City in the Sun (39 page)

     "I want you always to remember, Grace," he said quietly, "that if you ever do need me, all you have to do is send word and I will come. Will you promise me that?"

     She faced the setting sun and nodded. "Let's say good-bye now, James. You must get started on your journey. It's a long way to Uganda."

A
LL THIS LAND, MY SON, THAT YOU SEE AROUND YOU AND
even beyond, belongs to the Children of Mumbi and to no one else."

     David sat and listened to his mother as she talked while preparing their supper. Two plump sweet potatoes wrapped in banana leaves were growing soft over steam; millet grains burst in boiling water and thickened into porridge. Although many of the women in the village across the river were adopting the European custom of eating three meals a day, Wachera still practiced the old tradition of sitting down to one huge dinner in the late afternoon.

     "The Children of Mumbi were tricked by the
wazungu,"
she said, "into giving up their land. The white man didn't understand our ways. He saw forest where there were no huts, and so he took it because he said there was no one living there. He did not know that the ancestors lived there or that the forest would one day be cleared for the huts of our children's children. The white man does not think of the past or of the future; he sees only what is today."

     David gazed worshipfully at his mother. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Now that he was approaching the threshold of manhood and would soon undergo the circumcision initiation, he was becoming aware of the way men looked at her; and women, too. The former was a hungry look; David knew that his mother was desired by men and often received offers of marriage. The latter was a look of envy—from women who secretly admired Wachera's life of freedom, with no man as her master. And everyone regarded the medicine woman with awe and respect.

     Although she had no husband and only one child—under other circumstances, reasons to pity her—Wachera was a revered woman among the clan because she was the keeper of the old ways. David had seen important people come to this hut over the years; his childhood was one long chronicle of chiefs and elders visiting and taking counsel with his mother, of women bringing their secrets and paying for charms and potions, of men offering their manhood. The little hut Wachera and David shared had heard the woes and joys of the Children of Mumbi, spoken through many mouths under many full moons. David was proud of his mother; he would die for her.

     But there was so much he did not yet understand. He was eleven years old and anxious for manhood and the wisdom it seemed to bring. He wanted her to speak faster, to tell more, to shine light on the dark mysteries that plagued his young soul.

     David sat on a troubled brink. Much of him was still child, so little yet man. But the child part longed for manhood and feared it might never come. There was another part of him, too, the Kikuyu part that looked enviously and longingly upon the white man's riches—his bicycles; his telegraph; his gun. David Kabiru Mathenge yearned to own such things, to possess such power, to be accepted into that elite corps. Long ago his father had had him baptized. Now David belonged to Lord Jesu, or so the
wazungu
said. Yet he was not the true brother they had promised he would be; he was not their equal. And so he resented them.

     "Do not love the
wazungu
, "his mother often told him. "Do not give them respect. Do not recognize their laws. But also, my son, do not take them lightly, but always remember the proverb that says a wise man faces a buffalo with caution."

     "We will eat now," Wachera said at last, scooping millet stew onto banana leaves. "You will recite for me the list of ancestors back to the First Parents. Then we will go into the forest, where a secret meeting is to take place. A great man is coming to speak to the Children of Mumbi. You will listen, David Kabiru, and memorize his words, as you have memorized the list of ancestors."

     W
ANJIRU HAD STAYED
late at the school hut to help Memsaab Pammi, the teacher. This was not done out of love for the memsaab or out of a sense of duty to the school; the nine-year-old girl always looked for excuses to avoid the boys who walked the same path to her village and who teased her mercilessly along the way.

     It was not that she was afraid of them; Wanjiru was afraid of nothing except the chameleon, which all Kikuyu feared. It was that her mother worked so hard to be respectable, and Wanjiru's dresses, torn or muddied at the hands of the boys, caused great grief.

     Her chores done, Wanjiru said
kwa heri
, good-bye, to the memsaab and left the thatch classroom. The sun was setting. She would have to hurry if she was going to be home before dark. When she passed through the gate where a sign read GRACE TREVERTON MISSION, Wanjiru hesitated. Before her spread a flat bed of lush grass that was perplexing in its uselessness. No animals grazed there; no crops were grown. Yet it was tended by gardeners and inspected by the bwana who carried a whip. Once Wanjiru had seen horses galloping up and down the field with white men on their backs swinging great sticks, while at the sides, under the shade of camphor and olive trees, memsaabs in white hats and frocks called out as if their men were warriors.

     But it was not the polo field which Wanjiru now contemplated; it was the hut at the end where two people she could just see in the waning light were finishing their supper.

     She knew who they were. Wanjiru's mother often went to the medicine woman when the children were sick. And once the widow of the legendary Chief Mathenge had come to Wanjiru's village to speak to the people of the
ancestors, and the family had celebrated with a great beer drink. Wachera fascinated the little girl. Even though the
wazungu
had forbidden the medicine woman to practice her ancient arts, she defied them; her defiance made all the people of the clan in awe of her. The boy, who Wanjiru knew was named David Kabiru, had only recently begun attending Memsaab Daktari's school. His mother had sent him to learn the ways of the white man, he had boasted, in preparation for the day when the Children of Mumbi would claim Kikuyuland as theirs again.

     Wanjiru found the mother and son preparing to go into the forest. She heard Wachera speak to David in a grave voice. The little girl sensed something important in what they were about to do; as her curiosity mounted, she decided to follow them.

     The way was long and fraught with evil spirits and golden eyes blinking in the bush. Wanjiru followed close behind, undetected, her young mind knowing how worried her mother was going to be but unable to resist the lure of the mysterious mother and son.

     Eventually the medicine woman brought the boy into a glade where, to Wanjiru's surprise, many men were sitting in silence. She recognized a few from her own village. Most were dressed in
shukas
and blankets and carried staffs in place of spears, but a few were in European clothes because they worked at one of the missions. The little girl watched them as she crouched in the bushes.

     There were no women at the gathering, but none of the men seemed to mind the medicine woman's presence. Indeed, a place was cleared, and a gourd of beer was handed to her. As if she were a man! Wanjiru thought, her eyes growing big.

     More men arrived, coming silently and materializing suddenly out of the night. No fire had been lit; the glade was washed in the light of the full moon, a time when important business was conducted. The men sat on the dirt, on boulders, on fallen logs; they shared sugarcane beer, a few chewed
miraa
leaf stems to keep alert, and some passed around a bottle of
colobah.
Wanjiru knew what this last drink was; it was highly prized among Kikuyu men because it was the white man's liquor and illegal for Africans to possess, and thus it was called "color bar."

     Wanjiru watched as the men sat in typical African patience. No one carried a watch; none cared about the movement of time. What Wanjiru did not know was that they had come here out of curiosity; word that a man named Johnstone was coming here tonight had passed from mouth to mouth. He was going to speak about the Kikuyu Central Association. Because of this, there were men hidden in the trees as guards. And every man at this meeting had taken a sacred oath of secrecy in order to weed out possible government informers. What they all were gathered here for tonight was illegal.

     Presently a strange sound disturbed the forest silence. It was like the rumble of an elephant's belly, distant at first and growing louder until a few men jumped to their feet, prepared to flee. But it was the man Johnstone, arriving on his English motorbike.

     The few who had heard him speak before commanded the group to silence and introduced him as Johnstone Kamau. A tall, powerfully built Kikuyu with a strong voice and piercing gaze, who wore, everyone saw, a tribal ornamental belt called
mucibi wa kinyata
, he strode into the center of the circle.

     The men sat spellbound as he spoke of the destiny of the African, of the need to unite, of the need to become educated. Wachera and her son listened; little Wanjiru listened.

     "In the old order of African society," Johnstone Kamau said, "with all the evils that are supposed to be connected with it, a man was a man, and as such he had the rights of a man and liberty to exercise his will and thought in a direction which suited his purposes as well as those of his fellowmen; but today an African, no matter what his station in life, is like a horse which moves only in the direction that the rider pulls the rein.... The African can only advance to a 'higher level' if he is free to express himself, to organize economically, politically, and socially, and to take part in the government of his own country."

     When he was finished, silence rushed in behind his words. He looked around at the faces of his audience, pausing briefly to study the beautiful young medicine woman in ancestral dress. Then he said, "We are free to speak here."

     A man named Murigo from Wanjiru's village said, "What are you telling
us? That we should drive the white man out of Kikuyuland?"

     "I speak not of revolution but of equality, my brother. Which of us here feels he is the equal of his white lord and master?"

     Another man, Timothy Minjire, said, "The
wazungu
have given us so much! Before they came, we lived in sin and darkness. Now we have Jesu. We are modern in the eyes of the world."

     Several men nodded in agreement.

     "But what have you traded for those things?" said Johnstone. "We gave them our land, and they gave us God. Was that a fair trade?"

     "The bwana is good to us," said Murigo. "Our children are healthier now; my sons are learning to read and write; my wives cook with plenty of oil and sugar. Before the coming of the bwana we had none of these things."

     "But we were
men.
Can you say that of yourselves now?"

     Looks were exchanged around the circle. One elder rose to his feet, glared imperiously at young Kamau, and strode away into the darkness; several others jumped up and followed. Those who remained continued to regard the upstart with suspicion.

     "We are millions while they are only thousands," boomed Johnstone. "Yet they rule over us!"

     "Does not a handful of elders govern all the Kikuyu?" argued one man.

     Johnstone gave him a piercing look. "Do a thousand hyenas rule over a million lions?" He pulled a newspaper from his hip pocket and waved it like a club. "Read!" he cried. "Read the white man's own words. He
admits
that one percent of the population of our country decides all the laws, and
that
percent came here as strangers whose ancestors dwell in other lands."

     The audience murmured.

     "They took away our spears and our war bells!" he shouted. "They have made women of our men. And now they seek to abolish the sacred initiation of girls, teaching them to read and write instead so that our women are made men. The
wazungu
are turning the Kikuyu upside down! They are slowly destroying the Children of Mumbi! And you go like sheep, kissing the hand that plunges the dagger! Wake up, sons of Mumbi! Act now before it is too late! Remember the proverb that says the family of 'I'll do it' was overtaken by the family of 'have done it.'"