My father was also part of the first generation in Kenya to leave their homes and families behind to find jobs and accumulate money, which could be found only in the cash economy the British established. He, like approximately 150,000 other young Kikuyu men, migrated from the Kikuyu native reserves to white-owned farms. Before the British arrived, animals, especially goats, were the main form of exchange. “How many goats (mbũai)?” you would be asked if you were selling land, or paying a marriage dowry or compensation. The life of a man was worth about thirty goats, that of a woman or a child less.
When the British decided to collect revenue and finance local development, they did not want to be paid in goats. They wanted cash. They also wanted to create a labor force, but they did not want to force people to work. So they introduced an income tax for men in most parts of the country that could be paid only in the form of money. This created a cash-based rather than a livestock-based economy. Of course, the colonial government and the British settlers were the only ones with money in their hands. So the local people, especially men, were indirectly forced to work on settlers’ farms or in offices so they could earn money to pay taxes. By the 1940s, settlers’ farms constituted a major source of employment.
This kind of economy accepted, indeed often required, that when men went to work in towns or cities, their wives and children would be left behind in the rural areas. Generally, men could visit only every three months, or sometimes as rarely as once a year, when they received time off or could afford the cost of travel. This separation of men from their families was completely new and resulted in large numbers of women-headed households, which had not been the case before. It also introduced negative phenomena such as prostitution, absent fathers, and sexually transmitted infections that were unknown until then and persist as significant challenges in society today.
On the settlers’ farms, however, men were not only allowed but encouraged to bring their families with them, because the wives and children contributed to the farm's labor force. At that time, farmers in the Rift Valley badly needed workers, because much of the agriculture was manual. There were very few tractors and plows, and even after mechanization was introduced in the 1930s, much digging, planting, harvesting, transporting, and milking of livestock continued to be done by hand.
Around 1943, before I developed the capacity for memory, my mother and I left Ihithe to join my father in Nakuru in the Rift Valley, about one hundred miles away, where he worked as a driver and mechanic on the farm of a British settler, D. N. Neylan. My father had no title to the land where he had established his household—he was effectively a squatter on the farm—but he could build housing for his family and cultivate crops on land Mr. Neylan apportioned to him. Often the settlers’ farms were so large that this land would be substantial, but the settlers could move squatters at any time.
Going to the Rift Valley to work was an attractive option for men, especially for Kikuyus, many of whom had been forcibly displaced from their land in the central highlands to make way for the settlers and new towns. The soil was fertile, which made it possible to grow a lot of food. We and other squatters’ children never went hungry. But there were no schools on or near the settlers’ farms. Even as I was growing up, it was not easy for the workers to send their children to school. This was a reality that was to shape my life.
Although my family could grow food for our household on the farm, if my father wanted to sell maize, for example, Mr. Neylan had a monopoly. To sell your harvest to a cooperative you had to be a member, a privilege afforded only to the settlers. While my father could sell as much as he wanted to Mr. Neylan, his remuneration was rather minimal compared to what Mr. Neylan himself was making selling to the markets. Squatters like my father would also receive maize flour and about a quart (or liter) of milk from Mr. Neylan as a daily portion for the work done on the farms. Even then, the man, his wife, and children were all required to provide labor. They were really glorified slaves, although of course they had the freedom to leave if they wanted.
Unlike many Kenyans on Mr. Neylan's farm who could provide only manual labor such as digging and harvesting my father was skilled: He could drive and he knew how to repair machines, trades he had learned as a young man. This gave him an advantage, and in time he became one of Mr. Neylan's most trusted employees.
My first memories are of being on that farm in Nakuru, helping my mother. When we arrived in Nakuru, my parents already had my two older brothers, Nderitu and Kibicho, and me. While we were there, my mother gave birth to my two younger sisters, Muringi (also known as Monica, her Christian name) and Wachatha (also known as Beatrice). As a young child, I went with my mother into the fields to help her take care of my sisters. She would put us down on the ground near her, and we spent the day playing in the soil and chattering among ourselves.
I also watched my mother work. She planted seeds, tilled the soil, plucked weeds, and harvested crops. Most were food crops, such as wheat and maize, as well as pyrethrum, a plant brought to Kenya by the British that was popular and highly valued as an insecticide. Pyrethrum was about the height of small children, so the settlers used children older than me to harvest it. In my mind's eye I can still see the little children in the fields picking the pyrethrum's white flowers. To me, then, it looked like a pleasant job.
On Mr. Neylan's farm, fields of maize and wheat stretched as far as my little eyes could see. When the wind blew over that wheat, the movement was beautiful, like waves. Before the harvest, the wheat turned golden brown, springing from a soil that was whitish gray and flecked with flickering grains of minerals. Managu, a green vegetable, flourished in maize fields after the harvest. Although it was considered a weed, it was a popular food, especially when used as an accompaniment to ugali, a maize cake something like corn-bread that we ate. I recall the older women making a big fuss of collecting the managu leaves for sale in markets in neighboring Nakuru town.
For me, the pleasures of managu were closer by. Small, yellow, juicy berries sprouted amid the managu leaves. Whenever I was sent with my siblings to look after our sheep and goats as they grazed in the freshly cut fields, I would feast myself silly on those berries! I ate so many that I would not be hungry for dinner when I got home. At that time, nothing in life was more pleasant than to be asked to take the animals into the fields. Unfortunately, one does not see the managu plants a lot these days—one of the negative consequences of overcultivation and the use of agrochemicals.
Like many men of his generation, even among the “people who read,” my father was a polygamist. Some churches were very strict and required men to have only one official wife at a time. Others were less so, including the church my father belonged to, the African Independent Church. My father had four wives, including one he married after I was born. My mother was the second wife. At the time I was living in Nakuru there were about ten children in my father's household.
All of us, the wives and the children and my father, lived in a single compound, a typical Kikuyu homestead. Our homestead covered a large open space and included several houses and a big courtyard with a fence and gate surrounding it. My father had his own hut, called a thingira, which was one large, round room constructed of mud and wood and covered by a sloped, grass-thatched roof. Here he ate, slept, and received guests, including strangers, who were not supposed to go beyond the thingira without permission from the man of the house. I would sometimes take food from my mother to my father in his hut, but as a girl I would not be expected to stay. This was the realm of men, boys, and male visitors.
Each of my father's wives had her own house, called a nyumba, similarly constructed but with several compartments. This was the realm of the woman, her children, and female visitors and relatives. Each house was between twenty and thirty feet across and divided into several separate areas by walls or sticks. My mother had her own place to sleep, while my sisters and I slept together in our own compartment, as my brothers did in theirs. Our beds were wood planks topped by mattress
covers that we stuffed with leaves, ferns, and grass.
The houses had no electricity or running water and were dark inside. There were small windows, but with no glass in them. In the middle of the nyumba was the fire where my mother prepared meals. This cooking area was the family's space, around which members talked, told stories, and shared their experiences of the day. Firewood was abundant and people mostly used dry wood, which produced very little smoke along with beautiful flames that illuminated the house. The mud walls and the thatched roofs retained the heat from the fire, so I do not recall being chilly, even during the cold season in July.
Sheep and goats also lived in the compound and some were kept inside the huts at night. I recall having a goat in the house with us that was fattened, slaughtered, and eaten when my mother gave birth to one of my younger sisters. By the time I was born, latrines had become a permanent feature of homesteads. Commonly, there would be two or three for a compound like ours and the women would keep them clean. As children got older, they were asked to help clean them, too.
Even though the living area inside the house was comparatively small, it did not feel crowded. We usually stayed in the house only at night. If you were inside during the day, it was because you were sick. Otherwise, someone would ask you, “What are you doing in the house? You're supposed to be outside working”—or, if you were a young child, basking in the sun. Today, many Kenyans, even in the rural areas, build houses made of bricks and metal and in the shape of squares or rectangles. Square corners are now perceived to be very progressive. To see a “traditional” Kenyan homestead, you have to go to the National Museum in Nairobi. But when I was growing up this was the only reality I knew.
As a child, I did not realize that some of the children were not my full siblings. In a polygamous homestead, we learned to live with our half siblings as part of a small community. I felt like everyone in the homestead was a member of the family. I could go to any of the other houses and be welcomed and feel at home, as could any other member of the family in my mother's house. We would call the other wives “mother” (maitü), but with an adjective: younger mother, maitü münyinyi, or older mother, maitü mükürü. My mother we called plain maitü. I did not sense any of the jealousy or hatred that is sometimes portrayed as being rampant in such a homestead.
In traditional Kikuyu society, a man had the freedom to marry as many women as he wanted. But, unlike today, he was required by cultural norms to take care of all his children. The society would not allow men to escape these duties. For one, a man was under strong peer pressure to embrace his responsibilities. If he did not behave properly, his peers could ostracize him from the community. Few people could withstand such public rejection. Today, that peer pressure, which was part of the culture, is gone. People can go to court, but they can still escape justice and abandon their responsibilities by disappearing to distant places or into the urban jungle. Some men do not seem to have the slightest feelings of guilt when they abandon their children. That was not the case when I was a child. Then, children were protected and attended to.
In many ways, the polygamous system worked well for children. Even though my mother went to work each day in the fields, my brothers and sisters and I never felt we were alone. If we were at home, we would be taken care of by whichever adult was also home. I am sure that there were conflicts in the household, especially between the wives, and that my father beat them, including my mother, because when I was much older they complained. But I never saw or heard about any of this as a child.
When there was a calamity, like a death in the family, we children were protected from that phenomenon, which of course is overwhelming even for adults. For instance, the first time I saw my mother crying, I learned from her that my uncle Kamunya had died young, his dreams unfulfilled. But I was shielded from all aspects of the death, so the memories I have of my uncle are of him herding his cows, working around his compound, or sitting in his home with a cup of tea. The adults seemed to appreciate that their children might not be able to process such profound experiences and so they would not give them information their young psyches could not comprehend. Today, young children are exposed to cadavers, coffins, and burials, experiences that might be too much for their young minds.
What I know now is that my parents raised me in an environment that did not give reasons for fear or uncertainty. Instead, there were many reasons to dream, to be creative, and to use my imagination. As I grew older, I learned that we can convince ourselves and our children, and if we are leaders we can convince our citizens, that we are in danger, either from what people might do to us or what we might do to ourselves. I know my parents occasionally told me things to keep me unaware and therefore unafraid. But parents have to do that sometimes to allow their children to grow up confident and resilient and able to confront challenges later in life.
My father and mother were very reserved with each other, which was typical of relationships between women and men at that time. Similarly, my siblings and I had formal relationships with my father. My early memories of him are as a serious person who kept his distance. When I met him on the farm, he would not say, “Oh, Wan-gari, there you are.” I would just know “That's my father.” That was all I needed. If you are trained to be satisfied seeing your father at a distance, you accept it. You are just happy he is there.
Most often, we children would see my father late in the day. Each evening, a fire would be made at the gate of our homestead and he, friends, visitors, and his sons would sit there. Everyone would pass by: the wives, the younger girls, and the livestock. I later learned that this ensured that my father knew that everyone had come home. When they had, he would close the gate and go into his hut, usually when dusk fell. This evening ritual made me feel secure and protected.
There is one memory of my father that has remained with me. He was in Nakuru town driving a large truck that was high off the ground. He had parked next to a café, now called the Ihithe Hotel, where we used to have tea if we were in town. The hotel belonged to one of my father's step-uncles, which is why we stopped there. I was standing on the hotel veranda and I had to look way up in the sky to see my father. Because the truck was so high, when my father got out of the cab he had to leap down. I saw this huge figure in heavy black boots jumping to the ground.
When he landed, he leaned down and said, “Hello! How are you?” and touched my forehead, the way adults customarily greeted children. For much of my early life my father was an overpowering figure. Yet here he was, singling me out, down at my level on the earth. In his prime, my father seemed like a mountain to me: strong, powerful, invulnerable, immovable. Many years later, when he got old and sick with cancer of the esophagus and could hardly move, that fantastic picture of him would come back. It helped me understand how wonderful it is to be healthy and able to move, how quickly those youthful years pass, and how vulnerable we are.
As he grew older, my father changed a lot. He became less formal and more interactive with his children. Consequently, my youngest brother and my younger half brothers and half sisters were able to have a much closer relationship with him as children than those of us who were older. As it turned out, for most of my childhood I lived with my mother and my sisters and brothers in Nyeri while my father stayed in Nakuru. Perhaps if he had been in the household during those years, I might have had a stronger relationship with him than I did. For many years, though, I saw him only occasionally when I would visit him in Nakuru.
In all the years we were together, my mother and I never disagreed. Sometimes you get to a point when you feel that your mother is pushing you a certain way, and you get fed up and even rebel. I never had that with her. I know now as a mother myself that it was a great gift and privilege that she lived long and that I was able to take care of her and be with her when in her eighties she became weak. The fact that we never had an upsetting word between us is a source of great personal peace.
One memory of her has remained with me all these years, partly
because it caused me to question my behavior. It was Sunday and I had been to church. After the service, I followed a group of Pente-costals, a denomination that was becoming strong in Ihithe and nearby villages, to the Gĩtherere shopping center. The spirit was with me! When I arrived home I leaned against the wall of our house, singing my heart out, as I had just heard a young boy preacher do. My mother was sweeping the compound, and without saying a word, she took her broom and swept all around me as I sang my hymns.
“Now, why didn't she ask me to move, or why didn't I move instead of standing there in my bare feet singing while my mother worked?” I asked myself when my mother was finished sweeping and had gone to do errands. Was it my responsibility to move, or my mother's to tell me to? Is it that she was listening to my Pentecostal songs or did she think, “She ought to know better and move”? I never talked to my mother about the incident, but it taught me profound lessons—to question myself and assess my actions and then do what is right. My mother did not force her sense of justice and fairness on me—after all, she could have hit my dirty feet with the broom and said, “Get the hell out of here.” But she didn't. She just let me carry on singing. Her contentment and composure inspired me when I was old enough to appreciate it. Whatever disappointments my mother had, and I am sure she had some, she kept them to herself, a trait I learned to admire as I grew older and, inevitably, accumulated my own.
On Mr. Neylan's farm, people from many communities worked, including Luos, Kipsigis, and Kikuyus, who without the economic and labor system the British instituted would not have lived in proximity to each other. Each community kept to the category of jobs assigned to it. Kikuyus worked in the fields, Luos labored around the homestead as domestic servants, and Kipsigis took care of the livestock and milking. The communities also lived separately, which of course was deliberate. It was probably the master's way of making sure that everybody kept to their roles and remained apart. You would see a Kikuyu village here, a Luo village there, and a Kipsigi town down there.
Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage) Page 3