We got back, and I was never so glad to get back. We took Caprono to the Doctor. We went off for a cup of tea and a bath. Then we came back to see how he was getting on. And it was the sweetest thing I have ever seen. He solemnly produced a five bob note and apologized very profusely and said, “There you are, bwana, it’s all I have got. Will you accept it as it’s all I’ve got? I have always said that bwanas would never leave us behind on the battlefield, but now I know”. He said, “Whereabouts is your shamba?” I said, “Well it’s in England”. He said, “Oh well, you must come and visit me at mine”.
Abyssinian Patchwork Kenneth Gandar Dower.
The Italian supremo, the Duke of Aosta, was still entrenched in the mountain stronghold of Amba Alagi. In May 1941 a mixed force commanded by General Mayne, whose lines of communication stretched 500 miles to the Sudan and 700 miles to Kenya, had the task of storming this apparently impregnable fortress. By dint of sustained bombardment and scaling cliffs by men hauled up by ropes, they succeeded. On 16 May 1941 the Duke indicated that he wished to discuss terms of surrender.
So, after total capitulation and the evacuation of the fort was demanded and agreed, the garrison was granted the honours of war. Some five thousand Italians, with their arms, filed out past a Guard of Honour while the pipes played “The Flowers of the Forest”. The Duke came out last and was given a Royal Salute. He then thanked the South Africans for bringing his forty-four uniform trunks from Dessie and was driven off to meet General Platt. It was all over.
The Two Thousand Mile War W. E. Crosskill.
Not quite. There remained the fortress of Gondar in the north, which was stormed and taken by a mixed force of British troops and Abyssinian patriots on 27 November 1941, in the last battle of the campaign. Their victory accomplished, the East and West African troops were re-grouped and transported to South-East Asia, where they fought in the jungles of Burma against the Japanese. With them was a Maasai askari.
The last time I had spoken to a Masai was on a high ridge in Burma which stank of high explosive. The Masai was an NCO, lying on a bloody stretcher with several holes punched through his body by a Japanese machine gunner, dead now over his Nambu machine-gun, while not far off were a couple more Japanese slain by this Masai, one of them an officer whose long Samurai sword was now clutched in the Masai’s hand.
The Japanese officer had come for him in the hand to hand fighting, swinging his sword, and the Masai – they love to fight even as much as the Japanese do – killed him and, taking his sword, went in and fought with it until he was shot down. The Brigadier, knowing how generous the Masai could be, had written a little note and attached it to the wound tag round the Masai’s neck. “Please do not take this sword from this soldier. He is a Masai”. The Masai reached East Africa with his sword, and he has it now where he lives, far down in Masai-land.
Warriors and Strangers Gerald Hanley.
One of the war’s strangest episodes was the escape from their camp at Nanyuki of three Italian prisoners of war, with the unlikely intention of climbing to the summit of Mount Kenya. One of them describes a highlight of their brief taste of freedom.
At a place where the sun was shining on a smooth rock near the water we stopped for a short lunch of biscuit and toffee, spreading out our soaked boots and socks beside us to dry in the meantime. It had already become our habit to keep watch in every direction, so I sat one side of the narrow stream near our drying footwear and my companions on the far side, some six or seven yards from me.
I was just dipping a piece of dry biscuit into the river to allow it to swell and give me a real mouthful when the bamboo-thicket, some thirty yards behind my companions, parted.
Walking in our direction towards the stream was a wonderful, solitary bull-elephant.
I say “wonderful” on purpose because my first impression was not of fear, either for my friends or for myself, but one of genuine, deep admiration. No other creature, I thought, could represent in such a perfect way the strength, the dignity, the gravity and majesty of creation.
At last I roused myself and shouted to my companions: “Look!”
They turned their heads towards the huge brute and leapt to their feet. Never in my life shall I forget the spectacle of my two bare-footed friends gazing amazed at the amazed-looking elephant, scarcely twenty yards from them.
He was the first to take the initiative.
Renouncing his drink when only a few yards from the water he stopped and gave each one of us a short, almost contemptuous glance from his little vivacious eyes. Then he lifted his trunk almost vertically, together with his age-worn reddish-brown tusks, and dropped it gently and slowly in a disdainful half-circle. Immediately after that he wheeled in a right-about-turn, surprisingly swift for such a huge body, and, nonchalantly waggling his ridiculous-looking short tail and flapping his umbrella-like ears, ascended the path by which he had approached. A moment later his black shining back, surrounded by a halo of midges, was hidden by the leaves which bowed to his passage and then closed fan-like as though to mark the end of the show.
For a long time we stood where we were, gazing spellbound at the closed curtain as if blinded by an unnatural vision.
Had we not met at close quarters the king of the forests of Mount Kenya?
“Was he not worth the twenty-eight days’ cells?”
“He was worth everything, all our past and future toils”.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya Felice Benuzzi.
The three prisoners of war failed to scale the highest peak of Bation, but planted their homemade Italian flag on the summit of Lenana. Within three weeks they reported back to the astonished Camp Commandant, who reduced the statutory twenty-eight days in cells to seven quite convivial ones.
Michael Blundell who, in his subsequent career as a politician, was to support the transfer of power from white to black Kenyans, assesses the effects of their wartime experiences on the askaris who returned.
During the war, and especially after we had gone over to South-East Asia and seen an immense concourse of troops from other countries, the askaris became increasingly conscious of any differences in treatment between themselves and the troops of other countries. They asked why only Europeans were officers in the East African Army and why the food scales were different as between white and black soldiers. They learnt that courage, fear, hunger and physical exhaustion were common to men of all races. I noticed afterwards in my political life that there was a marked difference in outlook between many of the European electorate who had served with the African in the field and those who had not been so privileged. To the former the barrier of race was much less formidable and the eventual right of the African to achieve man’s estate in his own country much more acceptable.
The first real seeds of African nationalism were sown in the later years of the war, when the African thus began to question the traditional differences between himself and the white man. As I have written, he suddenly wished to be accepted as a man amongst the other races of the world. He was no longer in contact with a few white men, often specially selected for or drawn to Africa, but came in contact with them in the mass. He formed his own opinions and came to the conclusion that they were much the same as his fellow tribesmen, with the same physical fears and courage, the same vices, and possibly the same virtues.
So Rough a Wind Michael Blundell.
Mau Mau
An underground movement aimed at the recovery of land they deemed rightly to be theirs, and at the expulsion of the Europeans, had for some time been spreading among the Kikuyu, both within their reserve (tribal territory), and among Kikuyu living as “squatters” on European farms. In August 1950 this movement, or society, was banned, but it continued to spread and on 20 October 1952 a State of Emergency was declared. At the core of the movement lay a series of oaths that every member had to take. Karari Njama, a Kikuyu schoolmaster, gives an account of his initiation.
After Sunday service I met Mr Samuel Ndiritu Njagi, a clerk in the
Ministry of Works, a true friend and a schoolmate at Kagumo who had recently married my relative. He kindly invited me to his home. When we arrived, I learnt that he had brewed beer in his mother’s hut. We spent the whole of the afternoon drinking and talking on one’s job and the country’s politics. A few persons came and shared the drink with us. In the evening we left toward home. On the way, Ndiritu told me that he had been invited to a feast by my neighbour, Charles Ngatia Gathitu, a pitsawyer and licence holder on timber trades, situated about 400 yards east of my home. We passed many people on the way and arrived at the house at twilight. There were some people standing outside, including Charles, the owner of the feast. He led us into one of his big huts. Inside, were many people sitting and a hurricane lamp was burning. We were told to wait there while some preparations went on in the other hut. Groups of men and women continued to come until there was very little room for anyone to sit. A few persons would be called by names and moved in the next hut. When I was called to go to the next hut, I was very pleased, but arriving outside in a clear moonshine, I could see hundreds of people standing some armed with pangas, simis (swords) and clubs. They formed a path on both sides leading to the door of the next hut. I became certain that the day had arrived for me to take the oath, and I had to face it manly, I thought.
As I led my group marching in the cordoned path, they waved their pangas and swords over our heads and I heard one of them asking whether there was an informer to be “eaten”. With a reply that we were all good people from another person, we entered the next hut.
By the light of a hurricane lamp, I could see the furious guards who stood armed with pangas and simis. Right in front of us stood an arch of banana and maize stalks and sugar cane stems tied by a forest creeping and climbing plant. We were harassed to take out our coats, money, watches, shoes and any other European metal we had in our possession. Then the oath administrator, Githinji Mwarari – who had painted his fat face with white chalk – put a band of raw goat’s skin on the right hand wrist of each one of the seven persons who were to be initiated. We were then surrounded (bound together) by goats’ small intestines on our shoulders and feet. Another person then sprayed us with some beer from his mouth as a blessing at the same time throwing a mixture of the finger millet with other cereals on us. Then Githinji pricked our right hand middle finger with a needle until it bled. He then brought the chest of a billy goat and its heart still attached to the lungs and smeared them with our blood. He then took a Kikuyu gourd containing blood and with it made a cross on our foreheads and on all important joints saying, “May this blood mark the faithful and brave members of the Gikuyu and Mumbi3 Unity; may this same blood warn you that if you betray our secrets or violate the oath, our members will come and cut you into pieces at the joints marked by this blood”.
We were then asked to lick each others’ blood from our middle fingers and vowed after the administrator: “If I reveal this secret of Gikuyu and Mumbi to a person not a member, may this blood kill me. If I violate any of the rules of the oath may this blood kill me. If I lie, may this blood kill me”.
We were then ordered to hold each others’ right hand and in that position, making a line, passed through the arch seven times. Each time the oath administrator cut off a piece of the goat’s small intestine, breaking it into pieces, while all the rest in the hut repeated a curse on us: “Tathu! Ugotuika uguo ungiaria maheni! Muma uroria muria ma!” (“Slash! May you be cut like this! Let the oath kill he who lies!”).
We were then made to stand facing Mount Kenya, encircled by intestines, and given two dampened soil balls and ordered to hold the left hand soil ball against our navels. We then swore: “I, (Karari Njama), swear before God and before all the people present here that …”
We repeated the oath while pricking the eye of a goat with a kei-apple thorn seven times and then ended the vows by pricking seven times some seven sodom apples. To end the ceremony, blood mixed with some good smelling oil was used to make a cross on our foreheads indicating our reception as members of Gikuyu and Mumbi (while) warning us: “Forward ever and backward never!”
We were then allowed to take our belongings, put on our coats and shoes and were welcomed to stay. We paid 2/50s. each for registration. During the course of our initiation, one person refused to take the oath and was mercilessly beaten. Two guards were crying (out) seeking permission from their chief leader to kill the man. The man learnt that death had approached him and he quickly changed his mind and took the oath.
Mau Mau From Within Donald Barnett and Karari Njama.
Mugo Gatheru comments on the psychological effect of the oaths on his people.
First of all, the taking of oaths was not new to the Kikuyu. It was an integral and powerful part of our society, as in most societies at one time or another in their development. The variety of oaths was large to suit the many serious occasions of life, a binding force providing an important moral sanction of society. They were an essential part of tribal law, like the ordeals of fire and water of early English society. Basically, the oaths fell into two categories, major and minor.
If a man denied responsibility for the pregnancy of a girl, the Council of Elders would administer a minor oath to test his innocence. If the man lied, the punishment which he himself had invoked would fall on him between seven days and seven months from the oath. His body might erupt with boils, his animals (his wealth) or even he himself might die; whatever its form, the punishment was inevitable.
The major oath was used to settle land disputes, allegations of larceny and other criminal offences and to test witch doctors suspected of using black magic to poison others, on their own account or hired to do so. Again, the Council of Elders, having failed to solve the problem by arbitration, would administer the oath. However, the major oath had such terrible consequences, involving the man’s family and even his entire clan, that he had to obtain their permission before submitting to it. The punishment to follow a major oath dishonestly sworn would fall three and a half years after the oath, ‘imera mogwanja’, and would be incalculable in its effects.
The psychological effect of the oath was literally terrifying to the Kikuyu. If a man lied, he lied not only to society but also to the ancestors’ spirits, whom we have seen could cause great suffering if displeased, and still more he lied to the Creator, Ngai himself. Once taken, it followed that an oath was irrevocable. There was no possibility of mental reservation or de-oathing; during the Emergency, the colonial administration held “de-oathing” ceremonies, the only effect of which was to confuse the people with one further variety of fear. Certainly, few felt that the ceremonies absolved them and their families from the evils to follow the renunciation of their original oath.
Child of Two Worlds Mugo Gatheru.
A British Intelligence officer outlines the movement’s development after the State of Emergency was declared, and the principal known or suspected leaders arrested and detained.
Gradually Mau Mau became organized for war and its members divided themselves into two groups known as the Militant Wing and the Passive Wing. The Militant Wing lived mostly in the forest and consisted of gang members. The Passive Wing comprised those people who provided money, supplies, shelter, recruits or intelligence for the gangs. They lived in the towns, on the farms, or in the Reserve. While carrying on their normal work they formed a network of committees all over the area to fulfil their obligations to the movement. They were just as brutal as the gangsters and organized oathing ceremonies and killings to achieve their ends. The term “Passive Wing” was one of the most staggering misnomers of Emergency terminology.
By the middle of 1953 it was evident that there was no central Mau Mau authority. It seemed instead as though three separate spheres of influence existed; one in Mount Kenya, one in the Aberdares, and one around Nairobi. Such information as was available showed that the Mau Mau was an amazing compound of craziness, efficiency, superstition, courage, detailed planning and boastfulness. As an example of boastful
ness it is interesting to recall that one of the leaders described himself as Prime Minister of the Kenya Parliament, Commander in Chief of the Gikuyu and Mumbi Trinity Armies and Towns-watch Battalions, President of the Kenya Young Stars Association, President of the Gikuyu and Mumbi Itungati Association, President of the Kenya African Women’s League and Chairman of the Kinyarikalo Memorial Club!
Another limiting factor was the supply of arms and ammunition. Most of the ammunition came from the Passive Wing who collected it, if necessary, one round at a time. They also supplied arms though the gangs collected a lot by raiding. Furthermore, a large number of guns were made by the terrorists themselves from old pipes, door bolts, wood, nails and elastic bands. Such weapons were not very reliable but they made a bang which was good for morale. They also looked like real weapons, especially at night, and this was good for terrorizing the population. Occasionally they exploded in the faces of their owners, which was good for a laugh according to the Kikuyu mentality. They therefore had their uses.
Altogether the Mau Mau seemed to be a fairly formidable force. In spite of the comic names and crazy weapons there was not much to laugh about. Few people realized that the ragged terrorists whose antics were occasionally reported in the newspapers belonged to such an intricate and well ordered system as existed in August 1953.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 26