Although I was formally registered with the University of Giessen, I spent most of my time at the University of Munich, in Bavaria, where I did the bulk of my dissertation research under the supervision of Professor Peter Walter. This entailed frequent travel back and forth between Munich and Giessen, which took about half a day on the train. However, as you might expect, the German trains were reliable and punctual and traveling through the countryside was a delight because it was clean, green, and fresh. Professor Walter was very supportive, and I made some wonderful German friends.
In Munich I lived in a Studentenhaus (student house), close to the university in a neighborhood full of little restaurants, theaters, and places to drink German beer for those who preferred beer to wine. I loved German wine. I loved Munich, too, and particularly enjoyed the English Garden, which was next to the School of Veterinary Medicine. It is Europe's largest park, nearly two and a half square miles, and lies alongside the Isar River. In summer, the garden was full of brightly colored flowers, green trees, and expansive lawns. In winter, my friends and I walked there and enjoyed the snow and the quiet. The park was very safe, even at night. It was a wonderful place for me to escape and reflect on the journey I was on in Germany.
I supplemented my knowledge of German with courses at the Goethe Institute and found it relatively easy to speak or listen to German in classes or in the world outside the universities. Being in Bavaria was very interesting, especially with respect to language. One of my friends was a veterinary doctor, Fräulein Koch, who was a lovely young lady. When we were at the university, she always spoke to me in High German, which I could follow. But as soon as we stepped into the streets, Fräulein Dr. Koch would speak to her friends in Bavarian dialect and completely lose me!
The countryside in the southern highlands of Germany was beautiful and very green. Occasionally I would go with friends from the university into the mountains. I also vividly remember the annual carnival, or Fasching. Traditionally, Fasching represented the two-month period before Lent when people would indulge in pleasures forbidden to them once Lent began. During this time, a good deal of drinking and dressing up in elaborate disguises took place. Sometimes I couldn't even recognize my friends in the costumes they spent hours and lots of money creating. Today Fasching is a time for fun and laughter, whether you are going to observe Lent or not.
Having been in America made it easier for me to have fun in Germany. My exposure to Europe, which had brought Christianity to Kenya, helped me see that there should be no conflict between the positive aspects of our traditional culture and Christianity. After all, Europeans were themselves very close to their culture: How could it be bad when Africans held on to their culture even as they embraced Christianity? This was important to me because my culture was ruthlessly destroyed under the pretense that its values and those of Christianity were in conflict. I watched in awe and admiration as Westerners embraced their culture and found no contradiction between it and their Christian heritage.
In the spring of 1969,I returned to Nairobi and rejoined the University College of Nairobi, now as an assistant lecturer, and continued to do research for and write my dissertation. I also resumed teaching. Mwangi and I were married in May. He was thirty-four and I was twenty-nine. Reflecting our lives in both worlds, we had two different ceremonies—a traditional one, held on my father's farm in Nakuru, and a Catholic wedding at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Nairobi, for which I wore a long, white Western-style wedding dress with a veil and carried a bouquet of white flowers. I also wore a beaded necklace with nine strings, which represented the married daughters of Gikuyu and Mumbi, the primordial parents of all Kikuyus. It had been made especially for me, for that day.
By this time, Mwangi had decided to run for a seat in Parliament in that year's election, the second since independence, and had started his political campaign. Rather unexpectedly, I found myself part of this campaign. It was very demanding since I had to combine my teaching and dissertation with politicking. Sometimes I would work all night, even though I was also pregnant with our first child. I was expected to be a superwoman, which I wasn't, and consequently the campaign was both trying and tiring. I hoped my partner appreciated what I was sacrificing for him.
I was very conscious of the fact that a highly educated woman like me ran the risk of making her husband lose votes and support if I was accused of not being enough of an African woman, of being “a white woman in black skin.” This meant that competitors and detractors would visit our home with a double agenda: Some would claim to be supporters and want Mwangi's guidance, while others would look for gossip that could be used in public rallies to embarrass him and lose him votes. I treated everyone the same, even when it was obvious they were detractors. They were often surprised that I spoke Kikuyu, as well as the national (Kiswahili) and the official (English) languages, and that they were received warmly and treated with respect and dignity by a woman they all knew was a lecturer at the University College of Nairobi.
Like any woman without my academic credentials I attended to my home, personally received and served guests, and made them feel welcome. It was important for me to demonstrate to people that they were welcome in our home. What they encountered was very different from what they expected. I served them personally with food no matter the time of day or night or whether they were hungry or not. Once a woman had fulfilled these obligations, she could sit and talk with the guests. This wasn't a problem for me. I did it naturally and still do, even though I'm no longer a politician's wife. The training I got as “a good African woman” during the campaigns still serves me well: If you come to my house, I still get the urge to rush to the kitchen and make you something to eat, never mind how worn out I feel at the end of the day!
This attitude of many of our people was curious given that Kenyan politicians were part of the elite. Like Mwangi, many had been educated abroad, spoke English at home and in their workplaces, wore European-style clothes, and lived in European-style houses. But they wanted to project their “Africanness” through their wives, both at home and in society. Women are commonly described as carriers and promoters of culture. Yet men are also carriers of culture: Why in these instances couldn't they express it?
Another reality of being a politician's wife was that I was constantly in public, whether with Mwangi on the campaign trail or, as often was the case, representing him at forums where I was the featured speaker. This experience led me over the next few years to develop the style I maintain to this day. It became important for me not to wear clothing that might put me in a compromising situation because it was too tight-fitting or short. Therefore, long dresses and skirts became practical as well as comfortable and stylish. I gradually abandoned the short dresses (even my nice red one!), trousers, and high heels I had accumulated and loved to wear in America when I was single and independent.
Nineteen sixty-nine was a challenging year in many ways. My second brother, Kibicho, died at the young age of thirty-nine of pancreatitis. Although my oldest brother, Nderitu, had been more influential in my life, I was closer in age to Kibicho and we grew up together. It was a great shock to see him pass away so young and for his children to be left without a father.
There was also another death that greatly affected me: One late afternoon in the middle of the campaign, Mwangi came home with a terrible look on his face. “What's happened?” I asked, worried.
“Mboya has been killed,” he replied, agitatedly. It was stunning news. This was the same Tom Mboya who had been instrumental in the Kennedy Airlift and who had become minister for economic planning and development in Jomo Kenyatta's postindependence administration.
Mboya was a member of the Luo community (Kenya's second-largest ethnic group) and had been seen as a successor to Kenyatta. His death, supposedly at the hands of a Kikuyu, roiled the country and has since caused much mistrust and suspicion between the two communities. It was also a watershed in the short history of independent Kenya. Soon after Mboya's assassina
tion and the 1969 elections, Kenyatta banned the Kenya People's Union (KPU), an opposition party founded in 1966, and arrested its leader, Oginga Odinga, another prominent Luo. This effectively brought an end to the multiparty system in Kenya, a system that would not be revived for another twenty-three years.
Unfortunately, when the elections were held in early December, Mwangi narrowly lost. He returned to work at the Colgate-Palmolive Corporation and began planning his second run for 1974. Happily for us, a few weeks later our first child, a boy, was born. I had had a good pregnancy and the delivery, at Nairobi Hospital, went well. In line with Kikuyu tradition, we named our son Waweru, after Mwangi's father. I took a few weeks off from the university but went straight back afterward. I hired a nanny to take care of Waweru during the day, although at lunchtime I came home to nurse him, even though these were the days when African women were being advised not to breastfeed but instead to give their babies formula.
I enjoyed being a mother and had a wonderful time during those early years with Waweru and then with our two other children, Wanjira, our daughter, whom we named for Mwangi's mother, and Muta, our second son, named for my father. (If we had had a second daughter, she would have been named for my mother, Wanjiru.)
In 1971, I completed my Ph.D. on the development and differentiation of gonads in bovines, which deepened my understanding of how sexual organs develop to become female or male. I spent hours at the microscope, studying tissues and describing the developmental anatomy of these organs. The degree was awarded by the University College of Nairobi, which was still a constituent college of the University of East Africa. I was among the last students to be awarded a degree by that university. The University College of Nairobi was dissolved shortly afterward, and the constituent colleges became full-fledged universities—of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Makerere. The University of Nairobi was Kenya's first national university.
With Mwangi accompanying me, I walked up to the dais to receive my diploma from President Kenyatta, who as the head of state was also the university's chancellor. I was the first woman in East and Central Africa to receive a doctoral degree—a significant achievement that went largely unnoticed. It didn't even make the media headlines, probably because I was not the president, or his daughter, and my husband wasn't famous. It is funny how such things can be conveniently ignored. By that time, I was expecting Wanjira and it was only a matter of a few months before she arrived, the day after Christmas.
When I received my Ph.D., the university's School of Veterinary Medicine was in full swing. More and more Kenyans were taking over positions from retiring professors who had established and then led academic departments in the years after independence. After the completion of my Ph.D. work, I was made a senior lecturer. I enjoyed teaching. I have heard that students thought me to be a serious and dedicated teacher. None of them complimented me then but I also know that I wouldn't have gotten away with less.
My classes consisted of a lecture that took place in the lab, after which the students would try to see for themselves under the microscope what I had just taught them. Once the students started looking at slides under the microscope, I would go around to each one and make sure they had really understood. “That looks right,” I would say or “That doesn't look quite right. You have to work more on that.” To check in individually with each student in the class was natural to me.
In America as well as in Germany professors were very engaged with their students, as was Professor Hofmann, under whom I learned how to teach. I may have picked up this style from him and others I worked with. I also learned to distinguish when students were listening and understanding and when they were lost—that was the time to ask, “Anybody listening?” Going to class unprepared or facing students in a compromised state was completely unacceptable in those days.
Ironically, this approach and method of communication was useful on the political campaign trail because I could engage the public and discuss with them rather than preach to them. Today, when I meet my former students, it is always very satisfying to hear them express appreciation for the valuable times we shared at Chiromo.
What I did not enjoy at the university was the discrimination I and my fellow female colleagues faced. Bearing in mind my first encounter with the professor of zoology in early 1966, it became important to ensure that female members of staff were accepted as equal members of the university's academic staff and received the same benefits as their male colleagues.
Before Vertistine Mbaya and I arrived, there had never been an African woman among the academic members of staff in the faculty of veterinary sciences at the University of Nairobi, and the number of women on the academic staff of any faculty at the university was at that time tiny. Vertistine, an African American who had come to Kenya in the early 1960s and was married to a Kenyan, Simon Mbaya, taught in the Department of Biochemistry and was qualified to get all the benefits due to academic members of staff. So was I. (A woman married to another member of the academic staff complicated the issuance of benefits such as housing, health insurance, and a pension, because it would mean duplicating benefits. Neither of our husbands, however, enjoyed that status.) I met Professor Mbaya, or Vert, as she is known to her friends, in the second-floor corridor outside our offices at the Chiromo campus. Only three offices separated us and we hit it off immediately. She has been a wonderful and trusted friend ever since.
Vert and I waged this first fight for equality together. Many of the benefits given to male professional staff at the university were legacies of the colonial era, when young male teachers from Britain were encouraged to work in Kenya and other colonies and were provided with incentives in addition to their salaries. These included housing, free tuition for their children's education, and paid holiday time. When Kenya became independent, we took over most of these systems completely intact. The university also had a number of incentives that, taken together, amounted to a large increase of one's salary.
However, the university's full benefits accrued only to men. At that time, only single women or widows on the professional staff could receive university housing. Married women were expected to be housed by their husbands and it was argued that they therefore did not “need” a housing allowance or insurance coverage or a pension. I argued with the university that this was completely unacceptable and that terms of service must be equal. Professional women, I said, could not be discriminated against just because during colonial times no women professionals came to work in the colonies. This seemed a completely reasonable proposition. It never occurred to me that Vert and I would have to fight this battle. That I or other women should be paid less than our male colleagues of equal standing was very irritating to us. Because of that type of discrimination, junior male staff took home more than we did, despite our senior academic positions.
We went to the university officials and demanded an explanation for the gender discrimination. “You are married,” they informed us, shrugging their shoulders. “You should just take the basic salary because the rest of the services that men get you don't need. Your husband is getting those services from his place of work and he should have you benefit from them. If he does not, too bad.” We were outraged by the arrogance and what appeared to be men refusing to accept that a woman can be a professional in her own right. “Well, my husband doesn't help me teach,” I argued, raising the alarm for battle.
Our complaints fell on deaf ears. That only made us more determined. The members of the academic staff operated the university Academic Staff Association. When Vert and I were elected association officials, we decided to engage the university authorities using the official positions we now occupied. Unfortunately, the association could not negotiate with the university over salaries and benefits, which is what we wanted, because its legal status did not allow this. We therefore decided to turn the association into a union, which could negotiate. This was controversial for many reasons, not least because the chancellor of the university was also the president of the
country. Therefore, when we tried to make the association into a union through the courts, it was tantamount to taking the president to court. I need not tell you how easy it was for this case to be dismissed.
In the end, however, the university must have decided that to maintain peace the two of us should be given what we were asking for. From then on, although women colleagues continued to be paid less than their male counterparts and did not receive equal benefits, Vert and I were treated like honorary male professors! We continued to campaign, urging women—especially those married to academic members of staff or civil servants (all of whom received superior terms and incentives)—not to sign discriminatory terms-of-service contracts that would, for example, deny their children the medical insurance coverage and deny them the pension granted our male colleagues.
However, the women refused to join us. Many said they'd been advised by their husbands not to be part of that struggle. Perhaps it is not surprising. Those women opposing our campaign were portraying us as women who didn't want to live with our husbands, which of course was not true. Fighting battles with women can be very difficult and sad, because both society and the women themselves often make it appear that most women are happy with the little they have and have no intention of fighting for their rights. I am often confronted by women who have waited until that security called “man” is no longer available to them to remember that they should have protected their rights, irrespective of the men in their lives. That is when women will say, “You know how men are!”
Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage) Page 13