Secret Lives & Other Stories

by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

  Wahinya must have seen through me. I can’t remember how we first met or who first spoke to whom. I remember, though, my initial embarrassment at his ragged clothes and his grimy face. It seemed he might pull me down to his level. What would the other boys think of me? How quickly school could separate people! At home in order to preserve my school uniform I wore similarly ragged clothes and often went to bed hungry. From our conversations I soon found that we shared a common background. We came from Ilmorog. We were both without fathers: mine had died of Chang’aa poisoning: his had died whilst fighting in the forest. So we were brought up by mothers who had to scratch the dry earth for a daily can of unga and for fees. We attended similar types of primary schools: Karing’s Independent. But while mine came under the Colonial District Education Board, his was closed and the building burnt down by the British. All African-run schools were suspected of aiding in the freedom struggle.

  Thus blind chance had put Wahinya and me on different paths. And yet with all our shared past, I felt slightly above him, superior. Deep in my stomach was the terror that he might besmirch my standing in school. But occasionally he would slip twenty cents or fifty cents into my hands. For this I was grateful and it of course softened my initial repugnance. So I, the recipient of his hard-earned cents that helped me hide my humiliation of lies and pretence and put me on an equal footing with the other boarders, became the recipient of his dreams, ambitions and plans for the future.

  ‘You are very lucky,’ Wahinya would always start, his eyes lit. He would then tell me how he loved school and what positions he had held in the various classes. ‘From Kiai to Standard 4, I was never below No. 3. Especially English … aah, nobody could beat me in that … and in history … you remember that African king we learnt about? What was his name … Chaka, and Moshoeshoe … and how they fought the British with stones, spears and bare hands … and Waiyaki, the Laibon, Mwanga, the Nandi struggle against the British army …’ He would become excited. He would reel off name after name of the early African heroes. But for me now educated at Siriana this was not history. I pitied him really. I wanted to tell him about the true and correct history: the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and Vikings, William the Conqueror, Drake, Hawkins, Wilberforce, Nelson, Napoleon, and all these real heroes of history. But then I thought he would not understand secondary school history and Siriana was reputed to have the best and toughest education. He would not, in any case, let me slip in a word. For he was now back with his heroes gazing at today and tomorrow: ‘Do they teach you that kind of history in Siriana? Only it must be harder to understand … I used to draw sketches of all the battles … the teacher liked them … he made me take charge of the blackboard … you know, duster, chalk and the big ruler in the shape of a T. You know it?’ He would question me about Siriana: what subject, what kind of teachers … ‘Europeans, eh? Do they beat you? Is it difficult learning under white men who speak English through the nose?’ Often as he spoke he would be eyeing my jacket and green tie: he would touch the badge with the school motto in Latin and I often had the feeling that he enjoyed Siriana through me. I was the symbol of what he would soon become, especially with the rumoured departure of white men.

  And that, gentlemen, was how I would always like to remember Wahinya: a boy who had never lost his dreams for higher education. His eyes would often acquire a distant look, misty even, and he seemed impatient with his present Shukla surroundings and the slow finger of time. ‘This work … only for a time now … a few more days … a little bit more money … aah, school again … you think I will be able to do it? … Our teacher … he was a good one … used to make us sing songs … I had a good voice … you should hear it one day … he used to tell us: boys don’t gaze in wonder at the things the white man has made: pins, guns, bombs, aeroplanes … what one man can do, another one can … what one race can do, another one can, and more … One day … but never mind!’ He always cut short the reference to his teacher, his eyes would become even more misty and for a few seconds he would not speak to me. Then as if defying fate itself, he would re-affirm his teacher’s maxim: what one man can do, another one can. Newspapers, well, printed words fascinated him. He always carried in his pockets an old edition of The Standard and in between one job and the next he would struggle to spell out words and meanings. ‘You think one day I’ll be able to read this? I want to be able to read it blindfolded, even. Read it through the nose, eh? Now you see me stumbling over all these words. But one day I will read it … easy … like swallowing water … Here tell me the meaning of this word … de … de … deadlo … ck … deadlock … how can a lock die?’ I must say I could not help being affected by his enthusiasm and his unbounded faith especially in those days of lean pockets and occasional gunsmoke in the sky.

  Gentlemen, you are no longer touching your drinks. What’s left to us but to drink? Drinking dulls one’s fear and terror and memories … and yet I cannot forget the last time I saw him in Chura. Same kind of Saturday afternoon. He was waiting for me by the railway crossing. I was embarrassed by this and I affected a casual approach and cool words. He was excited. He walked beside me, tried the customary pleasantries, then whipped out something from his pocket. An old edition of The Standard. ‘See this … see this,’ he said opening a page … ‘Read it, read it,’ he said thrusting the whole thing into my hands. But still he tried to read over my shoulder as we walked towards Shukla and Shukla Stores.

  Did you miss the student airlift abroad?

  Study abroad while at home.

  Opportunities for higher education.

  Opportunities for an attractive career.

  All through correspondence.

  Apply:

  Quick Results College,

  Bristol,

  England.

  P.S. We cater for anything from primary to university.

  It was the days of those airlifts to America and Europe, you remember. Wahinya was capering around me. He fired many questions at me. But I knew nothing about correspondence schools. I dared not show him my ignorance though. I tried to make disparaging comments about learning through the post. But he was not really interested in my defeatist answers. His dream of higher education would soon be realized. ‘I can manage it … I will manage it … Uhuru is coming, you see, … Uhuru … more and better jobs … more money … might even own part of Shukla and Shukla … for these Indians are going to go, you know … money … but what I want is this thing: I must one day read The Standard through the nose …’ I left him standing by Shukla and Shukla, peering at The Standard, his eyes probably blazing a trail that led to a future with dignity. Nothing, it seemed, would ever break his faith, his hopes, his dreams, and that in a land that had yet to recover from guns, concentration camps and broken homes.

  I went back to my studies and prepared for the coming exams. Most of us got through and were accepted in Makerere, then the only University College in East Africa … no – not quite true … there was Dar es Salaam … but then it had only started. No more fees. No more rules and restrictions. We wore worsted gaberdines and smoked and danced. We even had pocket money. Uhuru also came to our countries. We sang and danced and wept. Tomorrow. Cha. Cha. Cha. Uhuru. Cha. Cha. Cha. We streamed into the streets of Kampala. We linked hands and chanted: Uhuru. Cha. Cha. Cha. It was a kind of collective madness, I remember, and those women with whom we linked our loins knew it and gave themselves true. The story was the same for each of us. But none of us I am quite sure that night fully realized the full import of what had happened. This we knew in the coming years and perhaps Wahinya had been right. And what years, my Lord! Strange things we heard and saw: most of those who had finished Makerere were now being trained as District Officers, Labour Officers, Diplomats, Foreign Service – all European jobs. Uhuru. Cha. Cha. Cha. Others were now on the boards of Shell, Caltex, Esso, and other oil companies. We could hardly wait for our turn. Uhuru. Cha. Cha. Cha. Some came for the delayed graduation ceremonies. They came in their dark suits, their cars and
red-lipped ladies in heels. They talked of their jobs, of their cars, of their employees; of their mahogany-furnished offices and of course their European and Asian secretaries. So this was true. No longer the rumours, no longer the unbelievable stories. And we were next in the queue.

  We now dreamt not of sweets, Fanta and ginger-ale. The car was now our world. We compared names: VW, DKW, Ford Prefects, Peugeots, Flying A’s. Mercedes Benzes were then beyond the reach of our imagination. Nevertheless, it all seemed a wonder that we would soon be living in European mansions, eat in European hotels, holiday in European resorts at the coast and play golf. And with such prospects before my eyes, how could I remember Wahinya?

  Travelling in a bus to the city one Saturday during my last holidays before graduation, I was dreaming of a world that would soon be mine. With a degree in Economics and Commerce, any job in most firms was within my grasp. Houses … cars … shares … land in the settled area … these whirled through my mind when suddenly I noticed my bus was no longer alone. It was racing with another called Believe In God No. I, at a reckless pace. I held my stomach in both hands, as we would say. The two buses were now running parallel making on-coming vehicles rush to a sudden stop by the roadside. It seemed my future was being interfered with by this reckless race to death. And the turn-boys: they banged the body of the bus, urging their driver to accelerate – has the bus caught tuberculosis? – at the same time jeering and hurling curses at the turn-boys of the enemy bus. They would climb to the luggage rack at the top and then swing down, monkey-fashion, to the side. They were playing, toying with death, like the death-riders I once saw in a visiting circus from India. You could touch the high-voltage tension in the bus. At one stage a woman screamed in an orgasm of fear and this seemed to act like a spur on the turn-boys and the driver. Suddenly Believe In God No. I managed to pull past and you could now see the dejected look on the turn-boys in our bus, while relief was registered on the faces of the passengers. It was then, when I dared to look, that I saw one of the turn-boys was no other than Wahinya.

  He came into the bus, shaking his head from side to side as if in utter unbelief. He was now even more frail looking but his face had matured with hard lines all over. I slunk even further into my seat instinctively avoiding contact. But he must have seen me because suddenly his eyes were lit up, he rushed towards me shouting my name for all in the bus to hear. ‘My friend, my friend,’ he called, clasping my hands in his and sitting beside me, slapped me hard on the shoulders. He was much less reserved than before and despite an attempt to keep the conversation low his voice rose above the others. ‘Still at Makerere? You are lucky, eh! But remember our days in Chura? Those Indians … they never left … dismissed me just like that … But it’s good our people are rising … like the owner of these buses … the other day he was a Matatu driver … now see him, a fleet of ten buses … In one day he can count over 100,000 shillings … Not bad, eh? You better finish school soon, man. Educated people like you can get loans. You start a business … like the owner of these buses … do you know him? The M.P. for the area … John Joe James, or J.J.J…. To tell you the truth, this is what I want to do … a little money … I buy an old Peugeot … start a Matatu … I tell you no other business can beat transport business for quick money … except buying and renting houses … Driver, more oil,’ and suddenly, to my relief I must say, he stood up and rushed along the unpeopled aisle. He had spied another bus. The race for passengers would start all over.

  I went away slightly sad. What had happened to the boy with hopes for an education abroad while at home? I soon dismissed this sudden jolt at my own dreams, and tried to re-experience that sweetness in the soul at the prospect of eating a tasty meal. But the death-race had dampened my spirits.

  Eh? A glass to recover my breath? Welcome, sweet wine … Sweet eloquence … but what’s the matter, gentlemen? Drink also … I say a good drink, in a way, is the blood of life.

  You should have seen us a week after graduation. We drank ourselves silly. Gates of heaven were now open, because we had the key … the key … open sesame into the world. Mark you it was not as rosy as it had seemed once we started working. I worked with a commercial firm and all the important ranks were filled with whites … experts, you know … and one stayed for so long in training, it tried one’s patience … especially four years after independence … Is it still the same? In a way yes … experts who are technically under you and still are paid more … and make real decisions … still I can’t say I have been disappointed … If you work hard you can get somewhere … and with government and bank loans … the other day I got myself a little shamba … a thousand acres … a few hundred cows … and with a European manager … the ‘garden’ is doing all right. And that’s how I get a few cents to drink … now and then … my favourite bar has always been this one … gives me a sense of homecoming … and I can observe things you know … homeboy … after all man has ambitions … And occasionally they employ beautiful juicy barmaids … man must live … mustn’t he? There was one here … huge behind … Mercedes they used to call her … I prefer them big … anyway one day I wanted her so bad. I winked at the watchman. I bent down to scribble a note on the back of the bill: would she be free tonight? Then I raised my head. The watchman stood in front of me. He had on a huge kabuti, with a kofia and a bokora-club clutched firmly in his hands. This was a new one I thought. Then our eyes met. Lo! It was Wahinya.

  He hesitated that one second. A momentary indecision. ‘Wahinya?’ It was I who called out, automatically stretching my hand. He took my hand and replied rather formally, ‘Yes, Sir,’ but I did detect the suggestion of an ironic smile at the edges of his mouth. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ ‘I do,’ but there was no recognition in his voice or in his manner. ‘What did you want?’ he asked, politely. My heart fell. I was now embarrassed. ‘Have a drink on me?’ ‘I will have the bill sent to you. But if you don’t mind, we are not allowed to drink while customers are in, so I will take it later.’ And he went back to his post. I had not the courage to give him the note. I went home, driving my Mercedes 220S furiously through the dark. What could I do for the man? What had happened to his dreams? … broken and there was not the slightest sparkle in his eyes. And yet the next weekend I was back there. That barmaid. Her whole body looked like the juicy thing itself crying: do it to me, do it to me. But whom could I send? I again called out for the watchman. I argued; he was after all employed for little services like that. And he was taking messages for others, wasn’t he? I gave him the note and nodded in the direction of the fat barmaid. He smiled, no light in his eyes, with that mechanical studied understanding of his job and what was required of him. He came back with a note: ‘YES: Room 14. CASH.’ I gave him twenty shillings and well, how could I help it, a tip … a tip of two shillings … which he accepted with the same mechanical precision. Wahinya! Reduced to a carrier of secrets between men and women!

  Occasionally he would come to work drunk and you could tell this by the feverish look in his eyes. He would talk and even boast of all the women he had had, of the amount of drink he could hold. Then he would crawl with his voice and ask for a few coins to buy a cigarette. I soon came to learn how he lost his job of a turn-boy. His bus and another collided while racing for a cargo of passengers. A number of people died including the driver. He himself was severely injured. When he came back from the hospital, there was no job for him. J.J.J. would not even give him a little compensation … he would talk on like that as in a delirium. And yet when he had not taken a drop, he was very quiet and very withdrawn into his kofia and kabuti. But as weeks and months passed, the sober moments became rarer and rarer. He became a familiar figure in the bar. At times he would drink all his salary in credit so that at the end of the month he was forced to beg for a glass or fifty cents. He had already started on Kiruru and Chang’aa. At such moments, he would be full of drunken dreams and impossible schemes. ‘Don’t worry … I will die in a Mercedes Benz … don’t laugh … I will save,
go into business, and then buy one … easy … the moment I buy one, I will stop working. I will live and die like Lord Delamare.’ People baptized him Wahinya Benji. Often, I wondered if he ever remembered the old days in Chura.

  One Saturday night he came and sat beside me. This boldness surprised me because he was very sober. I offered him a drink. He refused. His voice was level, subdued, but a bit of the old sparkle was in his eyes.

  ‘You now see me a wreck. But I often ask myself: could it have been different? With a chance – an education, like yours. You remember our days in Chura? Aah, a long time ago … another world … that correspondence school, do you remember it? Well, I never got the money. And it was harder later saddled with a wife and a child. Mark you, it was a comfort. Aah, but a little money … a little more education … school … our teacher … you remember him? I used to talk to you about him. What for instance he used to tell us? What one man can do, another one can: What one race can do, another one can … Do you think this true? You have an education: you have got Makerere: you might even go to England to get a degree like the son of Koinange. Tell me this: is that really true? Is it true for us ordinary folk who can’t speak a word of English? Put it this way: I am not afraid of hard work; I am not scared of sweating. He used to tell us: after Uhuru, we must work hard: Europeans are where they are because they work hard: and what one man can do, another one can. He was a good man, all the same, used to tell us about great Africans. Then one day … one day … you see, we were all in school … and then some white men came, Johnnies, and took him out of our classroom. We climbed the mud-walls in fear. A few yards away they roughly pushed him forward and shot him dead.’