Birth of a Dream Weaver

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  Tanganyika and Zanzibar seemed the only territories not plagued with such divisions, and this unity was reflected in their activities on the campus. Julius Nyerere set the tone by making Kiswahili the national language, with English simply for official business. His speeches were nearly always in Kiswahili.

  Unlike Tanganyika’s, Uganda’s independence was haunted by the split between Emmanuel Kiwanuka’s Democratic Party (DP), largely Catholic, and Apollo Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress (UPC). The UPC had allied itself with the Baganda king’s party, Kabaka Yekka (King Only), to win the general elections. This alliance ruled Uganda with Obote as prime minister and Kabaka as president. But even within the ruling alliance, tensions were brewing along ethnic lines.

  When, on the evening of October 10, we celebrated the new birth with good food, the chairman of Northcote Hall, Herman Lupogo, a Tanganyikan, had proposed a toast to Uganda. Makerere, he said, was a miniature East Africa, a place where men and women of different regions and communities could dwell in peace. However, Apolo Nsibambi, a Ugandan, struck a note of caution. Now that we were no longer “protected,” he said, we had no one to blame but ourselves for our mistakes, and this was the measure of our responsibility. Years later, Nsibambi, who married my classmate Rhoda Kayanja, became a prime minister in Yoweri Museveni’s government. Did he ever recall his cautionary words uttered in the time of bliss? They were prophetic about postcolonial Africa as a whole.

  Looming over the joy of decolonization was the chaos of the Congo—Lumumba’s assassination, the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, and the rise of Joseph Mobutu to power. Mobutu’s ascent is often depicted as the result not of Belgian colonial history and Cold War geopolitics but rather of interethnic and interregional strife. People seemed to forget the fact that all his life Mobutu had worked for the Belgian Army. A few months before independence, the Belgian authorities he had served so well had promoted him to colonel, a kind of parting gift—or was it an insurance policy? We ignored the significance of Mobutu’s taking the name Leopard to echo Leopold.

  Ethnic politics began to affect the Africanization of the civil service. The constitutions negotiated with Europe called for a smooth transition from the old to the new. It was in everybody’s interests, and the young leaders of the new nations were eager to show that they could maintain standards set by their colonial predecessors. Nobody wanted the chaos of the Congo, right? Nobody wanted disruption, right? Smooth transition meant not disrupting the structures of the old. Old wine in new bottles: that was the motto. After all, old wine was best.

  Recommendations to fill various vacancies came from the departing senior ranks, which were almost wholly European. They were retiring or being made to retire, but with nice retirement packages paid for in foreign currency to their banks in England. These retirees had already positioned their loyalists for succession à la Moses Wainaina. How do you keep the old intact yet make it the harbinger of the new?

  The governments tried to balance the claims of prior experience and seniority with the claims of ethnic sharing and fairness. Thus Idi Amin, the most senior African officer in the Ugandan Army, became head of the military. He and many others like him were promoted to meet both criteria: smooth transference of power and ethnic balance.

  The truth of Marx’s observation that the events of history appear twice, first as tragedy and second as farce, was being played out in Uganda: the old nineteenth-century divisions of Ugandans, particularly among the Baganda, among the Franza party (Catholic), the Ingleza party (Protestant), and the Muslim party were now represented in Obote’s UPC (Protestant), Kiwanuka’s DP (Catholic), and the Idi Amin wing (Islamic).

  I didn’t overinvolve myself in the emerging student political groupings, largely identified with the various political parties emerging in the territories. The only one whose activities I took part in was the Kenya Students Discussion Group, led by Bethuel Kurutu. This group did not want to align or identify itself with either KANU or KADU but created a forum for Kenyans of all political persuasions.

  Bethuel Kurutu, Njuguna wa Kimunya, and Ngũgĩ in front of Makerere University’s Main Building

  I felt drawn to matters of culture more than politics. I always felt that political organizations ignored the element of culture or viewed it as a matter of wearing robes made from colobus monkey skins, donning beaded caps, and holding fly whisks and carved ivory walking sticks, and of course surrounded by dancers and acrobats. They hardly saw culture as an expression of the dynamics of economics and politics. It was the unfolding politics in both Uganda and Kenya that gave me the theme of a three-act play, which I wrote under the title The Black Hermit.

  II

  The play takes place in an unnamed country soon after independence. Remi, the most highly educated of his community, works in the city and is in love with a white girl, Jane. He hardly ever goes back to his family in a rural area. But two events have taken place in the country that make his mother and the elders want to intervene and make him come back. With Africanization of bureaucracy in full steam, they want him to vie for office and rank and bring back to the community their fair share of Africanization. More urgently, his brother has died, and they want him to inherit the widow: it’s part of the traditional social security. They send him conflicting delegations.

  The first is a group of elders. They make their case, and as they depart, they leave behind a magic potion to influence him to make up his mind in their favor. On their heels is a second delegation of a priest armed with a Bible and a cross, again making a case for his return so he can help them compete with other communities for the fruits of independence. As they depart, the priest conveniently leaves behind the Bible in the hope that it will work on him and influence his decision.

  Remi has to choose among the conflicting demands of love, duty, community, individual, tradition, and religion. The plot plays out in the consequences of his decision to turn his back on Jane and the city and return to the village, but with the singular aim of crushing negative customs, traditions, and ethnic chauvinism and leading his community into the modernity of the new nation.

  III

  The excitement in the dramatic society and the general student community at the prospect of a major performance at the Kampala Theater was palpable. The feeling that we were daring to do what had not been done before, in English at least, imbued us with a missionary fervor. Years later in an e-mail to me, Gulzar Kanji née Nensi could still “remember the sheer disbelief in general that a black student at Makerere could be so brilliant as to write and produce such a tremendous play!”1

  Bahadur Tejani, my classmate and treasurer of the Makerere Students Dramatic Society, reflected on this moment in his memoir, Laughing in the Face of Terrorism. He recalled one of the early meetings at which Peter Kĩnyanjui, president of the society, asked, “What about the money?” Tejani, as the treasurer, felt the weight of that question, but he was prompt in his response: “I’ll find it. Let’s go.”

  “There was so much certainty in my voice and boundless enthusiasm for the new world, that the conversation changed completely from ‘Shall we and can we?’ to ‘When and how . . . ?” Tejani wrote.

  Tejani went on to do graduate work at Cambridge, teach in colleges in India, Africa, and the United States, and write poetry, plays, novels, and memoirs, but The Black Hermit moment remained indelibly marked on his memories of Makerere. He rallied the Indian community in Kampala behind the project, explaining to them that this was the first major African play in English and it was being staged for Uganda’s independence celebration.

  Despite David Cook’s invaluable presence during some of the early deliberations, this was a student project. And since it was not bound by the rules of the Interhall English Competition, we could draw participants from all the residences. Among the most loyal and committed were Asian Boxers.

  When I first heard the term, I thought it referred to actual boxers. I had never heard of female boxers or crossed paths with any, but now, whenever I saw s
ome women walking toward me, I would eye their hands suspiciously. Soon the mystery was cleared up. The original building of Mary Stuart Hall for women looked like a box. People started referring to the hall as the Box, and the residents as Boxers. The devotion of the Boxers who flocked to the cause could not have been any less than if they had been in an actual boxing ring battling forces arrayed against the project.

  Pat Creole-Rees, an English Boxer from Tanganyika, was the costumes designer. Led by Gulzar Nensi, also from Tanganyika, the Asian Boxers made all the costumes. “I remember the making of those costumes on a sewing machine that David Cook managed to secure for me,” Gulzar later recalled. “I do remember ironing and getting the costumes ready for each performance backstage, and making sure that each actor had his / her costumes looking clean and in good shape.”

  Nensi made history as the first Tanganyikan woman to graduate with a bachelor’s degree, and much later she made an even greater mark as an educationist in London schools. Her organizing skills were evident at the time of The Black Hermit. Being classmates and members of the reading group, we had a lot to share. She was always polite, the most considerate of persons, but I didn’t know that she had another side, a fighting side, to her character.

  In my time in the country thus far, despite histories of trade tension between the emergent Baganda middle class and the Indian middle class, I was most impressed by the relations between the Asian and African communities. They may not have run in and out of each other’s houses, but compared to the extreme social apartheid in Kenya, theirs was reasonable neighborliness.

  Having so much to share, Gulzar and I used to go for walks, discussing literature mainly. “I also remember our occasional walks on the campus talking about fairy stories and the grains of truth hidden in them,” she recalled. “I also remember us talking about the taking of human life and whether it could ever be justified.”

  One Saturday afternoon, Gulzar and I decided to go for a walk outside the walls of Makerere. We were going to visit Karienye Yohanna and his family. The college had not made any provision for married couples. Women who became pregnant had to end their studies, but the men who made them pregnant did not. If married, both could continue with their studies, but they had to find a place to live outside the gates of the college. Karienye lived in Naakulabye, between the Kasubi Royal Tombs and the Makerere Main Gate. Naakulabye was also the location of the Club Suzana, which would soon rival and outlive Top Life in Mengo, but that was not our destination. It was daytime, and it was really nice to have a purposeful walk outside the gates of our ivory tower. Moses Karienye had started writing for newspapers, so he and I had a lot in common as budding student journalists.

  We turned right into the road from Wandegeya and walked on the side, engrossed in literary conversation. We had hardly crossed Sir Apollo Kaggwa Road when suddenly cars from opposite sides stopped, some hooting to draw our attention. They were all Indians, and I assumed that they knew her. No, she said and continued. More cars stopped behind the others. Then loudly and aggressively the drivers started offering Gulzar a ride to wherever she wanted to go, completely ignoring the fact that we were together. I was scared, because it seemed they were ready to drag her by force into one of the cars or attack me or both of us. It would have been two against a mob. She stood her ground and told them to mind their own business. Eventually they drove off, still hooting aggressively. I offered to break the walk and return to the ivory tower, but she was adamant that we continue. Though she was obviously shaken, her reaction was the very definition of courage and moral outrage. But the confrontation also showed me a side of Uganda I had not encountered before.

  The incident made me appreciate even more what The Black Hermit production as a whole was doing. It brought into one mission students of different races, communities, and genders. The cast alone included four Ugandans, two Kenyans, one Malawian, one Tanganyikan, one Asian, and one Briton.2

  John Agard, a Ugandan of Papua New Guinea origins, played the lead African male. Though a student, Agard was already famous as the goalkeeper of the Uganda soccer team. He had a stage presence matched only by his defiance of gravity in real life as he smoothly reached out for a soccer ball in the sky. Though not dark, his skin was not so extremely light that it would interfere with realism.

  But an Asian for the lead African woman? Susie Tharu, née Ooman, had auditioned for the part. As an actress, there was no role she couldn’t play and play well. But a black mother?

  Mixed or blind casting is different from casting all the actors in a play from one race. At Alliance, all the Shakespeare characters were played by Africans in seventeenth-century English robes. At Makerere we had done Macbeth in African robes. In both cases, it was not a mixed cast. But having a white- or brown-skinned person play the role of a black mother?

  This was not the first time I was facing the dilemma and challenges of people of one race playing another race in blind casting. The dilemma had earlier confronted me during the last Interhall English Competition, at which I had entered The Wound in the Heart for Northcote. We didn’t have women in our Hall. Mĩcere Mũgo became one of the first associate or honorary female members later, but at the time even that provision was not there.

  In previous years, the rules for the Interhall English Competition forbade any help from other halls. Mary Stuart Hall, the only one for girls, was a rival. Girls played boys. Boys played girls, as in my 1961 entrant, The Rebels, for Northcote. But even when in 1962 the rules were relaxed to allow for minimal borrowing of talent from the other residences, old habits died hard.

  These old habits stood in the way of my getting an African Boxer to play Wangari, the black mother, in Northcote’s The Wound in the Heart. Paula Bernak, one of the second batch of American teachers, came to the rescue. Problem. She was white, with blonde hair, deep blue eyes, and an American accent. We decided to dress her in a long skirt and cover her head with a scarf. This took care of the body. The face was a challenge. We decided to paint her black. But we couldn’t blacken the eyelids and lips or do anything about her blue eyes. In dress rehearsal, some of the black paint wore off. She looked like a ghost from a bad minstrel show. It created a very jarring visual impression, undermining the tragic overtones of the play.

  For the actual show of the Wound, we settled for the long dress and the scarf. No painting Paula’s face. Unfortunately we opted for the change at the last moment, and patches of black remained, like camouflage paint that went wrong. Throughout the ordeal, Paula remained a good sport, and after a few lines, the audience forgot all about her accent and accepted the African character she portrayed. Even the patches of black acted as suggestions that she was merely playing a role. We opted out in time. The Wound in the Heart won.

  This experience was in the back of my mind. I gave Susie the role, but I was clear that I wouldn’t mask her face with makeup. I didn’t have to.

  Susie, born in Kampala, had had an unorthodox multicultural upbringing that enabled her to feel at ease in the role, even when auditioning. Not the least of that unorthodoxy was being home-schooled by her maternal grandfather in English, math, and Malayalam. This enabled the seven-year-old to join the Norman Godinho School, mainly for Goans, at grade four. She then moved to Aga Khan School, mainly for Ismailis, then to Kololo3 Government Indian School, for Indians, and then to King’s College Budo, a secondary school mainly for Africans. She was the only Indian student among blacks, and her father was the only Indian among white teachers. Then she had a nine-month stint working for the Uganda Argus, one of her assignments being to cover the new Uganda Parliament, the product of the independence that The Black Hermit was meant to celebrate. She entered Makerere in 1962, at nineteen, fresh from the parliament beat. Susie went on to graduate from Oxford and author many books. Years later, we met in Leeds, in London, in Irvine, California, and in Hyderabad in India, where she was a professor at the Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages. Each time, after catching up on the books we had written or
news of mutual friends, we would come back to The Black Hermit and her role as the black mother.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to do anything about her brown skin and long silky hair. A long dress and a scarf on the head was all that was needed to transform her into an African mother. She and John Agard became a perfect match; they made a charismatic duo of mother and son, around which the cast unified.

  IV

  Readings revealed weaknesses in the text. I tweaked the script constantly. Kathy Sood, the secretary of the production, played a daily role in the continual revisions of the script. She became editor, dramaturge, and keeper of records.

  Kathy was the only English Boxer in the department. Actually she was the second of two or three white students in the history of the department,4 the previous and first being Michael Woolman, son of the bursar of Mitchell Hall, an Australian, in 1957. There had been a few others scattered in other departments. After the American invasion, white students became more visible, but they came for a short period only. Kathy was the exception in our times, and even she did not complete all five years.

  She was a year behind me in the honors program. Small in stature with bright blue eyes, she was always very quiet, shy. That’s why what she did on one afternoon seemed crazily out of character. We were looking at a section of the script where Remi is addressing his followers; they keep cheering him wildly, calling him “Uncle!” First she asked me, “Why do they call him uncle? He can’t be their relative. Is it an honorific title, part of the African extended family system?”