In particular, Nazareth took issue with Moore’s dismissal of the characterization of the priest. While conceding weaknesses, Nazareth countered Moore’s claims of lack of depth in the exploration of issues by drawing attention to the play’s real-life impact: the conception of the padre led to “a whole series of sermons on Christianity by the chaplain of the St Francis Chapel.” However, the sermons about the characterization of the priesthood must have spread beyond the walls of Saint Francis Chapel.
IV
I was in a group of students, most of them ex-Alliance, books in our hands, strolling from the library to the classrooms on the other side of the Main Hall, when I sensed something familiar in the gait of a white man in a gray suit walking toward us.
It was Carey Francis, the principal of my old school.3 He was on the board of directors of Makerere, but our paths had not crossed here. I was happy, even eager, to meet him, but I didn’t think he would make me out in a crowd of mostly his favorites, paragons of behavior, some of them exemplary prefects, often cited as role models. Instinctively ready to give way to my seniors, I looked around. I was all alone. Somehow the others had melted away. Doubts tempered my eagerness. I should just walk past him, not try to remind him who I was.
“James,” he called out. I was flattered by the instant recognition.
“Tell me,” he asked, without preliminaries, “how did we wrong you at Alliance?” Clueless about what could have caused him so much pain that, four years after I had left the school, it still showed in his tone of voice and cold bearing, I muttered confusedly, “No, no wrong that I know.”
“Then why did you say those awful things about us?”
I couldn’t remember having said anything negative about my teachers at Alliance. The school was an integral part of my intellectual development.
I recalled, though, that I had published an article in the Sunday Nation of January 6, 1963, on Christianity and colonialism under the title “I Say Kenya Missionaries Failed Badly,” in which, among other things, I pointed out the symbiotic relationship between the two. I accused missionaries of producing a people who cared more about the poverty of the soul than the poverty of the body. But in writing it, I wasn’t thinking about Alliance, its principal, or the other teachers.
“Are you referring to the article?” I asked.
“What article? You have also written about it?”
“It was about missions in general,” I said ignoring his question.
“But we are the only missionaries you knew?”
One doesn’t have to experience a historical act in person to write about it. “I was talking about imperialism,” I said, hoping that this would end the matter.
It was not the discussion I would’ve liked to have with my former principal, whom I had not met since I left Alliance in 1958. I felt ridiculous standing there, holding books in my hands against my white shirt and gray woolen trousers, refuting implied accusations of betrayal.
The mention of imperialism seemed to rile him. He answered with impatient passion:
Don’t become a prisoner of isms, so beloved of the politician. Think of this instead: a company of men, of all races, bound together by the highest ideals of justice and freedom and service. Service above all. A proud member of this company is the priest and the missionary you deride. The missionary has given all—his earthily possessions, himself, his body, mind, and soul—to the service of the least among us. Your politician will demand that the hungry feed him, the thirsty give him water, the homeless build him palaces, the barefoot give him shoes, and the naked cloth him. The more he has, the more he will pad himself, even with the products of the ism he says he is fighting.
His politician made me recall a drawing of an overdressed African gentleman in flashy shoes, an outer jacket over an inner one, a toupee on his head, holding a walking stick, and wearing sunglasses, all under a tropical sun, with the caption “Don’t copy this man.” It was in the book on hygiene that Francis had written for elementary schools, years back.
Could Francis be seeing “this man” in the nationalists now leading many countries into independence? Or was his reaction a visceral resentment of triumphant nationalism?
He seized on my hesitancy.
“This mad rush towards Uhuru, James, has brought about a politician who demands service to self instead of self to service.”
“No more or less than colonialism has demanded of Africa.”
“The settler maybe, but not the missionary and the dedicated government official.”
“Can’t you see that to us they’re part of the oppressive colonial system?”
“But why blame it all on priests? Are you saying that we oppressed you at Alliance?”
“No, no.” I felt like screaming. He personalized the missionary enterprise, which prevented him from seeing how it fitted into the larger picture of the ism he derided when espoused by me.
“I wasn’t talking about you or any other person at Alliance,” I repeated.
“Yes, but the priest, your priest . . .
We parted the way we met: without pleasantries. It was only after he had left that it struck me: Chaplain Payne had probably talked to him about my depiction of Christianity through the character of the priest in The Black Hermit.
V
The conversation left me deep in thought about missionaries and colonial ministries. I liked Carey Francis. He could be obstinate, even quick to judge, but there could never be any doubt about his selfless devotion. There was also Reverend Fred Welbourne, different, open-minded, but a Christian missionary all the same. Can one abstract personal good conduct from the system the conduct serves? Or divorce a moral gesture from the context that created the conditions that made that gesture necessary? Is binding the wounds of victims of a system enough to erase one’s culpability in that system? Can a moral gesture of an individual wash away the sins of an institution?
Then there were also Payne and Foster, one rather sly and shy, the other boisterous and seemingly open-minded, but both representing a narrow view of the world, again, in different ways. Payne, at least, was too humble to claim a knowledge of the African mind, but Foster had imbibed his worldview from a long line of “experts” on the African who allowed their piety to sanction massacres without letting it lessen their own certainty about their place in heaven at the right hand of God.
I recalled my encounter with a book, Kenya from Within by W. McGregor Ross, in which I first read that the hymn “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” was composed by an English slaver. We used to sing it in Alliance High School chapel, and now Ross was telling me that John Newton composed it on a slave ship? Later I would check this, and yes, it was true; Newton wrote it on his very first voyage to West Africa as the first mate on the slave ship Brownlow in 1748 or 1749.
Reviewing the hymn in the light of the context of its inspiration made some of the verses sound like pure mockery:
How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.
It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And to the weary, rest.
Dear Name! the Rock on which I build;
My Shield and Hiding Place, . . .4
He also composed other Alliance High School favorites, including “Amazing Grace” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” as the captain of other slave ships, the Duke of Argyle and the African, sometime between 1750 and 1754, or in his vicarage, bought and maintained by the profits from his investments in slavery, which earnings continued even long after, decades later, he denounced the trade and joined Yorkshire parliamentarian William Wilberforce in abolition efforts.
The sounds he heard were those of the slaves as they groaned in the belly of the galley; the sorrow, that of the slaves as they moaned; and the wounds, those inflicted on the slaves
at his orders. The hungry souls were the slaves he starved. The rock on which he built was the rock to which he chained the slaves. Blake should have written that hells (as well as brothels) are built “with bricks of religion.” The imagery of fear, sorrow, and suffering is drawn from that of the slaves in the Brownlow, but Newton wrote as if it were he who were suffering the very wounds he was inflicting on the black bodies he carried for sale. The interest on the wealth from a good sale trumped interest in the health of a good soul. Newton co-opts the suffering of his victims for himself; they become spiritual “wounds” of his disembodied spirit. Abstracting Christianity from the realm of the practical and worldly to that of faith and grace in the realm of glory helped Newton reconcile the two interests. He could sin on earth all his life, but grace abounding awaited him, even if repentance came after a stroke near the end of his life.
Had the missionary similarly abstracted the experience of the colony into the realm of glory, where the conflict between the colonizer and colonized was amicably resolved in allegiance to a common faith? Christianity became the religion of empires the moment emperors realized that they could sin all they wanted all their lives and still have their sins washed away on their deathbeds.
VI
The Kampala Theater was my first lesson in the politics of performance space and the impact of performance on the politics of ideas. In reference to The Black Hermit, Whittock had written, “It brings into consciousness the tensions of our continent with humility and compassion.” We can substitute “the world” for “the continent.” Theater is a dangerous arena.
I could not have known it then, but years later, it would turn out that the struggle for space at the National Theater in Kampala was only a rehearsal for similar struggles in years to come, when The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, a joint effort by Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo and me, would meet with stiff resistance,5 with consequences that went beyond the confines of the performance space of the National Theater, into those of prison and exile. That was in 1977 in a Kenya that had replaced the Union Jack with its own flag.
11
Coal, Rubber, Silver, Gold, and New Flags
I
The rise of new flags characterizes my time in Makerere between 1959, the academic year of my admission and 1963–64, the academic year of my graduation. But if I were to frame the same Makerere time in terms of global events it would fall between Kennedy’s accession to power in 1961, preceded by the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and Kennedy’s own assassination on November 22, 1963, preceded by that of Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam. Driving the global politics of this period was the Cold War between the capitalist West and communist East for the allegiance of the new flags. Vietnam was the poster child of the Cold War.
Not that Vietnam was part of my consciousness the way Korea or China were; one of the LFA generals even adopted General China as his nom de guerre. However, I read Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American and found his character Alden Pyle’s belief in a third force, neither colonialism nor communism, suspiciously reminiscent of Kennedy’s 1957 Senate speech in which he denounced French colonialism in Algeria:
The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism; . . . it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism—and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.1
The shadow of the Cold War fell on events that had a direct impact on our lives. With CIA help, Lumumba was killed, as unreliable in the Cold War; with CIA help, Diem was killed, an ally no longer useful in the Cold War. But Kennedy?
We reacted to his death as we would to that of a friend or a neighbor. The day after he died, those of us having lunch in the Northcote dining room stood up for two minutes of silence. Words were hard to find, as Dinwiddy wrote in Newsletter 12, and it was felt to be better that each member of the community should, together with the others, rest in his own silence and reflect on the pain and the pity of the thing. Kennedy was a brilliant and courageous leader, Dinwiddy added, describing him as “a man of hope, who, with God’s Grace made each dauntingly difficult task to which he put his head seem possible to overcome.” A memorial service was held in Saint Francis Chapel and mass said in Saint Augustine Chapel. The American ambassador, Olcott Deming, attended on both occasions.
Who killed Kennedy was the most constantly asked question as we mourned his departure. There were reasons for this. Through his Algerian speech, his photographs with a host of African leaders—including Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Félix Houphouët-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika—Kennedy had made America come across as an ally of the new, even though there were signs that the friendship was a case of a West Atlantic power replacing the old East Atlantic powers in the affairs of the Third World.
The fact is, the Kennedy-inspired Teachers for East Africa and the Peace Corps were part of our lives at Makerere. The dramatic Kennedy airlifts that extended educational imagination and opportunities beyond Makerere Hill were still fresh in the minds of us Kenyans.
With Uganda’s independence and Tanganyika’s earlier, Kenya and Zanzibar were the odd members of the former quartet that had been ruled as British East Africa. The independent two worked hard, even announcing the very popular vision of an East Africa federation first in Nairobi, but later giving it a popular base at a rally at the clock tower in Kampala. The rally featured Nyerere, Obote, and Kenyatta in a joint appearance before a massive crowd. Makerere students flocked to the rally, singing:
Tulimtuma Nyerere
Kwa Uhuru
Kenya Uganda Tanganyika
Sisi twasaidiana2
For Nyerere, we would substitute the names Obote and Kenyatta in turn.
The declarations and now the rally increased regional pressure on the British to let Kenya go the way of the other two. The regional push, the mounting nationalist fervor within, and the negotiations going at Lancaster House in London, led to Kenya’s gaining internal self-rule in June 1963. It was called Madaraka in Kiswahili. My second son, Kĩmunya, was born a month after, the first in my family to be born in a partly free Kenya.
In West African performances, a small masquarade always precedes the big one. When the small appears in the arena, everybody knows that the big one is on the way.
It was as if Kĩmunya, named after Nyambura’s father, had come to tell that Madaraka, internal self-rule, a small masquerade, was paving the way for the big masquerade to come, waving a new flag and singing a new song.
II
The expected appearance of the big masquerade terrified white settlers. Jomo Kenyatta, as the first prime minister of the small masquerade of internal rule, spent time and energy assuring them that nothing would change, that they had nothing to fear from black rule. His would not be a gangster government, a not-too-subtle reference to the “Mau Mau,” whom the British had termed thugs and gangsters. The man imprisoned for eight years as the supposed leader of an armed resistance was signaling that his government would not be led by the ideals of the resistance.
Ironically it was in Kampala, not Nairobi, where the terror of white settlers would be expressed. On the eve of the big day for Kenya, some white residents in Kampala held a ritual mourning of loss in the form of a party.
White women came to the party draped in Union Jacks; their men wore sola topis (pith helmets). For good measure, the partiers reenacted the glorious days of natives being made to carry messages in a cleft stick. Every offensive racist image was revived in what came to be known as the Tank Hill mourning party.
Uganda had been flying her own flag for some time. The racist nostalgia did not amuse the Obote government, which reacted by expelling fifteen of the party organizers from the country. The Tank Hill party and the expulsions were hotly debated in London. The whites were just having a little fun, explained Duncan Sandys, Queen’s secretar
y of state, but unlike the British, who enjoyed such fun, no harm meant, other people were a little sensitive, and the British government had apologized to Uganda. But don’t worry: all the fun-loving crowd had their full retirement benefits in London bank accounts.3
The Tank Hill party was like something taken straight out of the pages of Conrad, men living in the outer posts of the empire, completely oblivious to threats of change or even actual changes.
III
In my last year, I concentrated on the work of Joseph Conrad, under David Cook. With his pen, Conrad had traversed the world of European conquest and domination from the far reaches of Asia through the heart of Africa to South America. There were attractions beyond his being a member of the literary pantheon of English literature. English was his third language; his Poland was torn apart by the European powers, Russia and Austria in particular. Did he, maybe, just maybe, see Poland reflected in the European colonial acquisitive ventures in Asia, Africa, and South America?
In his characters—who worked for corporations like Tropical Belt Company in his novel Victory, the silver-mining concessions of his fictional South American Castaguana in Nostromo, or the ivory trading company in Leopold’s Congo in The Heart of Darkness—Conrad always made it clear that it was not the egoistic pleasure of conquest or merely the pursuit of fame, nor the suppression of heathen customs in favor of Christian ideals: “To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.”4 In his major works, the struggle for coal, rubber, silver, gold, and other buried treasures dominates the narratives and underlies the racist structures of imperial power. Whatever his characterizations of the native resistance, it’s clear he was always much aware that the colonizer and the colonized are a product of the imperial process. “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much . . . 5
Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening Page 14