A Grain of Wheat

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  Mugo’s father and mother had died poor, leaving him, an only child in the hands of a distant aunt. Waitherero was a widow with six married daughters. When drunk, she would come home and remind Mugo of this fact.

  ‘Female slime,’ she would say, exposing her toothless gums; she would fix Mugo with a fierce glance, as if he and God had conspired against her. ‘They don’t even come to see me – Do you laugh, you – what’s your penis worth? Oh God, see what an ungrateful wretch is left on my hands. You would have followed your father to the grave, but for me. Remember that and stop laughing.’

  Another day she would complain that her money was missing.

  ‘I didn’t steal it,’ Mugo retorted, withdrawing.

  ‘There is only you and me in this house. I could not have stolen it. So who could have taken it?’

  ‘I am not a thief!’

  ‘Are you saying that I am telling lies? The money was here, you saw me bury it under this post. See the way he looks, he creeps behind the goats.’

  She was a small woman who always complained that people were after her life; they had put broken bottles and frogs into her stomach; they wanted to put poison in her food or drink.

  And yet she always went out to look for more beer. She would pester men from her husband’s rika till they gave her a drink. One day she came back very drunk.

  ‘That man Warui – he hates to see me eat and breathe – that sly – smile – he – creeps – coughs – like you – you – go and join him—’

  And she tried to imitate Warui’s cough; but in the attempt lurched forward and fell; all her beer and filth lay on the floor. Mugo cowered among the goats hoping and fearing she had died. In the morning she forced Mugo to pour soil on the filth. The acrid smell hit him. Disgust choked him so that he could not speak or cry. The world had conspired against him, first to deprive him of his father and mother, and then to make him dependent on an ageing harridan.

  The more feeble she became, the more she hated him. Whatever he did or made, she would deride his efforts. So Mugo was haunted by the image of his own inadequacy. She had a way of getting at him, a question maybe, about his clothes, his face, or hands that made all his pride tumble down. He pretended to ignore her opinions, but how could he shut his eyes to her oblique smiles and looks?

  His one desire was to kill his aunt.

  One evening the mad thought possessed him. He raged within. Tonight Waitherero was sober. He would not use an axe or a panga. He would get her by the neck, strangle her with his naked hands. Give me the strength; give me the strength, God. He watched her struggle, like a fly in a spider’s hands; her muffled groans and cries for mercy reached his ears. He would press harder, make her feel the power in his man’s hands. Blood rushed to his finger-tips, he was breathless, acutely fascinated by the audacity and daring of his own action.

  ‘Why are you staring at me so?’ Waitherero asked, and laughed in her throat. ‘I always say you are a strange one, the kind that would murder their own mother, eh?’

  He winced. Her seeing into him was painful.

  Waitherero suddenly died of age and over-drinking. For the first time since their marriage, her daughters came to the hut, pretended they did not see Mugo, and buried her without questions or tears. They returned to their homes. And then, strangely, Mugo missed his aunt. Whom could he now call a relation? He wanted somebody, anybody, who would use the claims of kinship to do him ill or good. Either one or the other as long as he was not left alone, an outsider.

  He turned to the soil. He would labour, sweat, and through success and wealth, force society to recognize him. There was, for him, then, solace in the very act of breaking the soil: to bury seeds and watch the green leaves heave and thrust themselves out of the ground, to tend the plants to ripeness and then harvest, these were all part of the world he had created for himself and which formed the background against which his dreams soared to the sky. But then Kihika had come into his life.

  Mugo went home earlier than usual. He had not done much work, yet he was weary. He walked like a man who knows he is followed or watched, yet does not want to reveal this awareness by his gait or behaviour. In the evening he heard footsteps outside. Who could his visitor be? He opened the door. Suddenly the all-day mixture of feelings distilled into fear and animosity. Warui, the elder, led the group. Standing beside him was Wambui, one of the women from the river. She now smiled, exposing a missing line of teeth in her lower jaw. The third man was Gikonyo, who had married Kihika’s sister.

  ‘Come inside,’ he called in a voice that could hardly hide his agitation. He excused himself and went towards the latrine. Run away from all these men … I no longer care … I no longer care. He entered the pit lavatory and lowered his trousers to his knees: his thoughts buzzed around flashing images of his visitors seated in the hut. Several times he tried to force something out into the smelling pit. Failing, he pulled up his trousers, but still he felt better for the effort. He went back to the visitors and only now remembered that he had not greeted them.

  ‘We are only voices sent to you from the Party,’ Gikonyo said after Mugo had shaken hands all round.

  ‘The Party?’

  ‘Voices from the Movement!’ Wambui and Warui murmured together.

  Two

  Nearly everybody was a member of the Movement, but nobody could say with any accuracy when it was born: to most people, especially those in the younger generation, it had always been there, a rallying centre for action. It changed names, leaders came and went, but the Movement remained, opening new visions, gathering greater and greater strength, till on the eve of Uhuru, its influence stretched from one horizon touching the sea to the other resting on the great Lake.

  Its origins can, so the people say, be traced to the day the whiteman came to the country, clutching the book of God in both hands, a magic witness that the whiteman was a messenger from the Lord. His tongue was coated with sugar; his humility was touching. For a time, people ignored the voice of the Gikuyu seer who once said: there shall come a people with clothes like the butterflies. They gave him, the stranger with a scalded skin, a place to erect a temporary shelter. Hut complete, the stranger put up another building yards away. This he called the House of God where people could go for worship and sacrifice.

  The whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the Agikuyu. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off. The hot water must have gone into his head.

  Nevertheless, his words about a woman on the throne echoed something in the heart, deep down in their history. It was many, many years ago. Then women ruled the land of the Agikuyu. Men had no property, they were only there to serve the whims and needs of the women. Those were hard years. So they waited for women to go to war, they plotted a revolt, taking an oath of secrecy to keep them bound each to each in the common pursuit of freedom. They would sleep with all the women at once, for didn’t they know the heroines would return hungry for love and relaxation? Fate did the rest; women were pregnant; the takeover met with little resistance.

  But that was not the end of a woman as a power in the land. Years later a woman became a leader and ruled over a large section in Muranga. She was beautiful. At dances, she swung her round hips this way, that way; her plaited hair rose and fell behind her in rhythm with her steps. This together with a flash of her milk-white teeth made men smack their lips and roll their tongues with desire. Young and old, they shamelessly hung around her court, and hoped. The woman chose for herself young warriors who became the target of the jealousy and envy of others less favoured. Still more men paid homage to her; they never missed a dance in which she was to appear, many desperately longed to glimpse at her thighs. Came a night when, no doubt goaded by the admiration she aroused, or maybe wanting to gratify their shameless longing, she overreached herse
lf. Removing all her clothes, she danced naked in the moonlight. For a moment, men were moved by the power of a woman’s naked body. The moon played on her: an ecstasy, a mixture of agony and joy hovered on the woman’s face. Perhaps she, too, knew this was the end: a woman never walked or danced naked in public. She was removed from the throne.

  About Jesus, they could not at first understand, for how could it be that God would let himself be nailed to a tree? The whiteman spoke of that Love that passeth all understanding. Greater Love hath no man than this, he read from the little black book, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

  The few who were converted, started speaking a faith foreign to the ways of the land. They trod on sacred places to show that no harm could reach those protected by the hand of the Lord. Soon people saw the whiteman had imperceptibly acquired more land to meet the growing needs of his position. He had already pulled down the grass-thatched hut and erected a more permanent building. Elders of the land protested. They looked beyond the laughing face of the whiteman and suddenly saw a long line of other red strangers who carried, not the Bible, but the sword.

  Waiyaki and other warrior-leaders took arms. The iron snake spoken of by Mugo wa Kibiro was quickly wriggling towards Nairobi for a thorough exploitation of the hinterland. Could they move it? The snake held on to the ground, laughing their efforts to scorn. The whiteman with bamboo poles that vomited fire and smoke, hit back; his menacing laughter remained echoing in the hearts of the people, long after Waiyaki had been arrested and taken to the coast, bound hands and feet. Later, so it is said, Waiyaki was buried alive at Kibwezi with his head facing into the centre of the earth, a living warning to those, who, in after years, might challenge the hand of the Christian woman whose protecting shadow now bestrode both land and sea.

  Then nobody noticed it; but looking back we can see that Waiyaki’s blood contained within it a seed, a grain, which gave birth to a movement whose main strength thereafter sprang from a bond with the soil.

  Meanwhile, the missionary centres hatched new leaders; they refused to eat the good things of Pharaoh: instead, they chose to cut grass and make bricks with the other children.

  So in Harry Thuku, people saw a man with God’s message: Go unto Pharaoh and say unto him: let my people go, let my people go. And people swore they would follow Harry through the desert. They would tighten their belts around the waist, ready to endure thirst and hunger, tears and blood until they set foot on Canaan’s shore. They flocked to his meetings, waiting for him to give the sign. Harry denounced the whiteman and cursed that benevolence and protection which denied people land and freedom. He amazed them by reading aloud letters to the whiteman, letters in which he set out in clear terms people’s discontent with taxation, forced labour on white settler’s land, and with the soldier settlement scheme which after the first big war, left many black people without homes or land around Tigoni and other places.

  Harry asked them to join the Movement and find strength in unity.

  They talked of him in their homes; they sang his praises in teashops, market places and on their way to Gikuyu Independent churches on Sundays. Any word from the mouth of Harry became news and passed from ridge to ridge, right across the country. People waited for something to happen. The revolt of the peasant was near at hand.

  But the whiteman had not slept. Young Harry was clamped in chains, narrowly escaping the pit into which Waiyaki was buried alive. Was this the sign they waited for? People went to Nairobi; they took an oath to spend their days and nights outside the State House till the Governor himself gave them back their Harry.

  Warui, then a young man, walked all the way from Thabai to join the procession. He never forgot the great event. When Jomo Kenyatta and other leaders of the Movement were arrested in 1952, Warui recalled the 1923 Procession.

  ‘The young should do for Jomo what we did for Harry. I’ve never seen anything to match the size of that line of men and women,’ he declaimed, gently plucking his beard. ‘We came from ridges here, ridges there, everywhere. Most of us walked. Others did not bring food. We shared whatever crumbs we had brought. Great love I saw there. A bean fell to the ground, and it was quickly split among the children. For three days we gathered in Nairobi, with our blood we wrote vows to free Harry.’

  On the fourth day they marched forward, singing. The police who waited for them with guns fixed with bayonets, opened fire. Three men raised their arms in the air. It is said that as they fell down they clutched soil in their fists. Another volley scattered the crowd. A man and a women fell, their blood spurted out. People ran in all directions. Within a few seconds the big crowd had dispersed; nothing remained but one hundred and fifty crooked watchers on the ground, outside the State House.

  ‘Something went wrong at the last moment,’ Warui said, and stopped plucking his beard. ‘Perhaps if we had the guns …’

  The revolt of the peasants had failed; the ghost of the great woman whose Christian hand had ended the tribal wars was quietened. She would now lie in the grave in peace.

  Young Harry was sent to a remote part of the country.

  The Movement was temporarily dismayed. But it was at this time that the man with the flaming eyes came to the scene. Then few knew him. But later, of course, he was to be known to the world over as the Burning Spear.

  Mugo once attended a meeting of the Movement held at Rung’ei Market because it was rumoured that Kenyatta, who had recently come from the land of the whiteman, would speak. Although the meeting was scheduled to start in the afternoon, by ten o’clock there was hardly any sitting-room at the market place. People stood on the roofs of the shops. They appeared like clusters of locusts perched on trees. Mugo sat in a place where he could command a good view of the speakers. Gikonyo, then a well-known carpenter in Thabai, sat a few feet away. Next to the carpenter was Mumbi. She was said to be one of the most beautiful women on all the eight ridges. Some people called her Wangu Makeri because of her looks.

  The meeting started an hour later. People learnt that Kenyatta would not attend the meeting. There were, however, plenty of speakers from Muranga and Nairobi. There was also a Luo speaker from Nyanza showing that the Movement had broken barriers between tribes. Kihika from Thabai was one of the speakers who received a big ovation from the crowd. He talked no longer in terms of sending letters to the whiteman as used to be done in the days of Harry.

  ‘This is not 1920. What we now want is action, a blow which will tell,’ he said as women from Thabai pulled at their clothes and hair, and screamed with delight. Kihika, a son of the land, was marked out as one of the heroes of deliverance. Mugo, who had seen Kihika on the ridge a number of times, had never suspected that the man had such power and knowledge. Kihika unrolled the history of Kenya, the coming of the whiteman and the birth of the Party. Mugo glanced at Gikonyo and Mumbi. Their eyes were fixed on Kihika; their lives seemed dependent on his falling words.

  ‘We went to their church. Mubia, in white robes, opened the Bible. He said: Let us kneel down to pray. We knelt down. Mubia said: Let us shut our eyes. We did. You know, his remained open so that he could read the word. When we opened our eyes, our land was gone and the sword of flames stood on guard. As for Mubia, he went on reading the word, beseeching us to lay our treasures in heaven where no moth would corrupt them. But he laid his on earth, our earth.’

  People laughed. Kihika did not join them. He was a small man with a strong voice. Speaking slowly with emphasis on the important words, he once or twice pointed at earth and heaven as if calling them to witness that what he spoke was the truth. He talked of the great sacrifice.

  ‘A day comes when brother shall give up brother, a mother her son, when you and I have heard the call of a nation in turmoil.’

  Mugo felt a constriction in his throat. He could not clap for words that did not touch him. What right had such a boy, probably younger than Mugo, to talk like that? What arrogance? Kihika had spoken of blood as easily as if he was talking of drawing water in a river,
Mugo reflected, a revulsion starting in his stomach at the sight and smell of blood. I hate him, he heard himself say and frightened, he looked at Mumbi, wondering what she was thinking. Her eyes were still fixed on her brother. Everybody’s eyes were on the platform. Mugo experienced a twang of jealousy as he too turned and looked at the speaker. At that moment their eyes met, or so Mugo imagined, with guilt. For a split second the crowd and the world at large seemed drenched in silence. Only Kihika and Mugo were left on the stage. Something surged for release in Mugo’s heart, something, in fact, which was an intense vibration of terror and hatred.

  ‘Watch ye and pray,’ Kihika said, calling on his audience to remember the great Swahili proverb: Kikulacho Kimo nguoni mwako.

  Kihika lived the words of sacrifice he had spoken to the multitude. Soon after Jomo and other leaders were arrested in October 1952, Kihika disappeared into the forest, later to be followed there by a handful of young men from Thabai and Rung’ei.

  The greatest triumph for Kihika was the famous capture of Mahee. Mahee was a big police garrison in the Rift Valley, the heart of what, for many years, were called the White Highlands. In Mahee too was a transit prison for men and women about to be taken to concentration camps. Situated in a central position, Mahee fed guns and ammunition to the other smaller police and military posts scattered in the Rift Valley to protect and raise the morale of white settlers. If you stood at Mahee at any time of day, you would see the walls of the escarpment, an enchanting guard to one of the most beautiful valleys in the land. The walls climbed in steps to the highlands; a row of smaller hills, some hewn round at the top while others bore scoops and volcano mouths, receded into shrouds of mist and mystery.