Green City in the Sun (46 page)

     "No, Memsaab Mdogo."

     Mona tipped her chin. "Then shouldn't you be getting back to work?"

     His eyes held hers for a moment; something cold and threatening passed between them. Then he said, "Yes, Memsaab Mdogo," and started to back away.

     "Damn insolent chap, I must say," muttered Geoffrey. "Got the look of a troublemaker about him if you ask me. I'll have a word with your father. That boy shouldn't be kept on."

     As they walked away from the fence, Mona glanced over her shoulder and saw David standing still again, staring at them. She felt a chill rush through her. There was something in his eyes....

     She reached for Geoffrey's hand and held it tightly.

     D
AVID WATCHED THEM
go. He was thinking of the ground their white feet trampled. It was the spot his mother had shown him many times; long ago a sacred fig tree had stood there. David made a vow from his heart to his ancestors: One day a new fig tree was going to be planted where the
wazungu
now walked.

W
ANJIRU DIDN'T OWN A MIRROR
. I
F SHE DID, SHE WOULD
have been able to inspect her earlobes to see if they were healing properly.

     A few young women her age were starting to turn their backs on the ancient custom of ear piercing, because of pressure from the missionaries, who preached against any sort of bodily mutilation. But Wanjiru was proud of her new wounds. They were the legacy of her ancestresses and showed the world that she could withstand pain.

     Ear piercing was a terrible ordeal. In childhood the first two holes, the
ndugira
, were made through the sensitive cartilage in the tops of the ears; then, as a girl approached adulthood, the larger, bottom hole was created. She would lie flat on the ground, and a medicine man or woman would jab sharpened sticks through her ears. She had to keep these in for three weeks, stoically bearing the pain, getting little sleep because it was difficult to lie down. Wanjiru's sticks had recently been removed, and Wachera Mathenge, the medicine woman down by the river, had smeared a healing salve on the
scabs. Wanjiru's ears still hurt and were not ready for the rings of copper and beads.

     But this was a triviality compared with the greater test that was yet to come.

     A secret initiation was going to take place. It was the first in a long time, and girls between twelve and eighteen were going to be brought from all over the district to be circumcised into the tribe. Although they could no longer engage in weeks of ceremonial preparations that strengthened the girls and gave them courage to face the knife without flinching—such rituals had been banned, and their sudden appearance would alert the authorities to the approaching initiation—Wanjiru was nonetheless undergoing a personal preparation of her own.

     Most of the girls, she knew, were terrified of what was coming; many were going to be forced into it by parents and brothers. But Wanjiru looked forward to the ancient initiation; she welcomed the test of pain and blood.

     But there was a more immediate issue on her mind now as she got ready to leave the hut she shared with her two unmarried sisters. A meeting of the Young Kikuyu Alliance had been called at the last minute by David Mathenge, and Wanjiru didn't want to miss it.

     Not that the men wanted her there. Women were never admitted to political gatherings, and such women and girls as did attend were there to carry food for their men, to sit and listen in respectful silence, to be invisible at the edge of the important business. Wanjiru, on the other hand, intended to take an active part.

     David Mathenge irritated her. Just the thought of him made her pull her one dress angrily over her head and do the buttons up wrong.

     He was an oaf, a dolt, a ditherer. It was beyond hot-blooded Wanjiru how such a smart and educated boy could be so slow, so blind, so ...
weak.
If she were he and had his influential name and an O level certificate and earned twelve shillings a month—if she were a
man
even—Wanjiru knew she could move mountains. Why, she wondered in exasperation as she said good-bye to her mother tilling their small shamba, didn't men use the power they had? If women had that power, what a different world this would be!

     This was the same path Wanjiru had walked eight years ago to and from
Grace Treverton's mission. In those days the boys had been cruel to her, trying to frighten her into quitting school. She knew now it had been because her presence in the classroom had set them to doubting their superiority over girls. Men were secure in their ascendancy, Wanjiru believed, as long as women were kept pregnant and illiterate, but an educated, independent woman frightened them, made them shift like a herd picking up lion scent. Wanjiru knew she rocked their male security. She did it on purpose, to goad them into action.

     That was exactly what annoyed her about David Mathenge. He was a talker, not a doer. And did he think he was fooling anyone by calling this meeting when it was known Chief John Muchina was in Nairobi? Of course, David wanted to avoid being arrested; everyone was familiar with the horror stories of what happened to African agitators in prison. But Wanjiru had no respect for a boy who stood up and made fine speeches when it was safe and then retreated in silence when authority arrived.

     She passed some boys on the dirt road now, young Kikuyu of her own age wearing blankets and grazing their goats. They stared at her—Wanjiru, the freak.

     She tossed her head back and walked proudly with breasts forward, buttocks sashaying, bare feet slapping the dirt, and long, strong arms swinging in confidence.

     Seventeen-year-old Wanjiru was secure in the knowledge of who she was and where she was going in life. And nearly all this she owed to her mother, who, abandoned by her husband with nine children and a dying shamba, had had the vision and courage to try to change the future. She had chosen one daughter, Wanjiru, and had taught her that she must never be owned by men. After Grace's primary school Wanjiru's mother had seen to it that her daughter was one of the first enrolled in the new Native Girls School in Nyeri, one of a few which were starting to appear the length of the province, places of higher learning called
kiriri
, named for the part of the hut where Kikuyu girls sleep. Wanjiru had just graduated from that high school, and she was going to enter the Native Civil Hospital in Nairobi as one of the first students in a brand-new program to train African women as nurses.

     The crowd at the meeting was large. David had chosen a significant site—the spot where a sacred fig tree had once stood on the edge of Nyeri town. To capture further the hearts and passions of his audience, David now climbed onto the giant stump left behind by the Catholic fathers when they had the tree cut down. There was not a Kikuyu present who did not recognize and appreciate the implication behind young Mathenge's gesture.

     When Wanjiru arrived, David was already speaking. She pushed through the lines of parked bicycles, the Africans' most prized possessions, and listened.

     "When the white men first came here," David was saying, "we thought they were temporary. They seemed to our fathers, and to many of you present here today, as a wandering people in search of a homeland. Out of pity we allowed them to stay and welcomed them to share in the bounty of Kikuyuland. But the white men got greedy, and now we know they are here to stay.

     "First, they instituted a hut tax on us, which was alien to our way of life. And the only payment they would accept was coins, which we did not have, and the only way to obtain these mysterious coins was to work for the white man.
On our own land.
Next, they installed the humiliating
kipande
system and made us wear identifications around our necks, the same tags they hang about the necks of their dogs! Finally, they are trying to break up our tribal unity by making illegal our precious ancestral customs such as native healing and the circumcision of girls.

     "When we complain, the white man tells us that he is doing this for
our own good
, as if we were children! He tells us that he is teaching us the value of disciplinary work, that he is teaching us the benefit of modern European ways. Instead, he has taught us to behave selfishly and to turn our backs on our family and ancestors!"

     The crowd stirred, saying,
"Eyh, eyh."
Wanjiru saw that while there were mostly young men listening to David's impassioned speech, many elders stood on the sidelines, leaning on their tall staffs, their skinny bodies draped in blankets. In spite of herself, Wanjiru began to become infected by David's persuasive oratory.

     "The white men brought God and churches to Kikuyuland and preached
equality from the pulpit. But I do not see African and European working side by side. White men are dedicated not to us but to furthering colonialism in Africa. They employ us at starvation wages, and we are not permitted in their presence when they eat except as servants. I tell you, brothers, that any form of multiracialism in Kenya would be like a union of a rider and his horse. They part company as soon as the horse has carried his rider to a win in the race!"

     The crowd murmured; heads nodded vigorously.

     "My brothers," David went on, "we hear the British continuously protesting the treatment of Jews in Germany today. But I ask you, are the Jews in Germany treated any worse than the Africans in all the colonies of this continent?"

     "No!" they cried.

     "Wait!" shouted an elder from the periphery of the mob. "You are wrong to say what you are saying, David Mathenge! The white man brought us the love of Lord Jesu, and for that we must be eternally grateful!"

     "And Karl Marx has told us that religion is the opiate of the masses," David cried back. "You have had the spirit and manhood dulled out of you, mzee, by this Lord Jesu!"

     The crowd gasped in shock.

     He continued, his voice rolling out over the stunned heads of his audience. "Today the white men dig up gold from where it is buried near Lake Victoria, take it to Europe, and bury it again! They use it to adorn their wives. We wish to adorn
our
wives—and that land where the gold lies belongs to us!"

     "But what would you have us do?" cried David's friends. "How can we change what already is? We have no power against the British."

     "We must be like the mosquito that lets its presence be known. We must set forth our demands for better schools and a university for Africans here in Kenya. We must go slowly and become educated and prove ourselves in the eyes of our colonial masters. We must remember the proverb that says the string bag is started weaving from the bottom—"

     "Proverbs!" came a voice from the rear of the crowd. All heads turned because it had been a woman's voice. "You are good at describing our problems,
Mathenge," Wanjiru called out. "But you give us no solutions to them except to utter worthless
proverbs!"

     David frowned. Wanjiru had the exasperating habit of never showing up when she was wanted and showing up when she wasn't! The girl needed a husband, he decided, to keep her in line. He ignored her.

     "I have drawn up a petition," he said to the crowd, holding up a sheet of paper, "demanding that the government provide for us a university in Nairobi. I will pass it around, and you will all put your names to it and then—"

     "And then the British will wipe their backsides with it!"

     Everyone turned to Wanjiru again. This time she elbowed her way through to the front; astonished men stepped aside to let her pass. "I ask you a second time, Mathenge. What solutions do you offer besides useless proverbs and paper?"

     He glared down at her. "We will win through unity and word of mouth."

     "Unity and
force!"
she cried.

     David felt his blood start to burn. His anger and lust rose at the same time. He could think of only one way to deal with this girl, but now was not the proper moment, nor in front of a thousand eyes. "We will launch a peaceful fight for freedom," he said.