On one hot afternoon, they all went swimming in their pelts in a natural pool in the nearby river. This upset the Rodney and Del Boy of Kitui, who happened to be fishing from the rocks with bows and arrows, a makeshift net, and a crudely fashioned rod cut from a tree. The exuberant splashing and screaming of the children must have put to flight every fish within a wide area. Twenty minutes later, a huge rumpus erupted among the twenty-five or so children. They had taken sides over a piece of bread supposedly belonging to Fundi, a deaf mute boy who had only entered the Centre that very day. Sr. Florence, Sr. Concepta and I had to try frantically to separate the brawling children. Fundi could throw some punch. My glasses were broken in the commotion—again.
Most mornings found me sitting at my classroom table teaching a bit of English and basic mathematics. During my final year in DCU, I had conducted tutorials in a few subjects with some undergraduate classes. This was a different proposition altogether, and it was not just the age difference. Probably the biggest challenge was linguistic; most of the children only understood Kikamba, their tribal language. So, as I was teaching them English, they were teaching me Kikamba, and we had great fun. One young lad named Mutua had a natural flair for teaching. I could not help thinking that he had the makings of a great teacher one day, if only he gets the opportunity. The street-childrens’ English, when I arrived, consisted mainly of telling me, ‘I am not a glue,’ and, ‘Your name is a-British, you come from America.’ I decided I would add geography to the curriculum.
The Akamba tribal language, in my view, must be one of the hardest languages on earth to learn. For example, there seems to be about a dozen ways to say ‘hello’ depending on such variants as the time of day, the age of the person whom one is addressing, and the degree of respect he or she merits. Each greeting comes with a different reply. Every word seems to have four vowels for every one consonant. Despite these complexities, Fr. Frank is regarded by many as the foremost authority on Kikamba anywhere in the world—even more than any Akamba person. He has lived in Kitui since 1961.
I had picked up some Kikamba by listening to people in Nyumbani and Kitui over the months. I never saw it written down, even though there are books in the language. Perhaps because of the amount of vowels, it is a wonderfully musical language. ‘What is your name?’ for example, sounds something like ‘waazz-ee-attaa?’ Kitui people used to laugh whenever I used Kikamba. This was quite off-putting at first, until I was assured they were laughing, not at my clumsy attempts to communicate, but at the sheer novelty of hearing a mzungu speak their tribal tongue. They must think of Fr. Frank as a native speaker by now. Compared to Kikamba, I found that Swahili was fairly easy to speak.
One morning, about two weeks after I started in the Centre, I arrived full of enthusiasm for the day ahead, just as I did every morning. Immediately I sensed a rather tense atmosphere; everybody seemed unusually sombre. I could hear raised voices somewhere in the building. Eventually Sr. Concepta arrived and gave me the story in a hushed voice,
‘Four of our street-boys left the Centre last night and raped a grown woman in the village.’
She pointed three of them out to me. One still had not returned. The shock at hearing this was momentarily overwhelming. I was full of conflicting emotions, mainly sympathy with the victim, as well as disgust at the perpetrators. But this was tempered by an awareness of the abusive backgrounds of the boys in question. I could not help contrasting in my mind how different my own innocent childhood had been. The children who raped the lady were around eleven and twelve years old. Two of them I had been getting on especially well with, and another of them was the hotheaded deaf boy, Fundi. I had developed a good rapport with him too.
This incident happened a month before the end of my time with the street-children. When I moved on, the boys were still at the Centre, much subdued; I was told the situation was still being assessed. There was, apparently, confusion over the circumstances of the assault. There was reluctance on the part of the nuns to go into any detail. They did not reveal the extent of police involvement, if any. There was a sense that the community had their own ways of dealing with these situations. There was a sense, too, that the business of the Centre was rehabilitation, not punishment.
The rape incident did not detract from the huge enjoyment of working with street-children. I spent some afternoons learning to play traditional African rhythms on a goat-skin drum. The children used to spontaneously and joyously dance and sing to the drumbeat in the timeless Akamba ways. It was almost as if they were hypnotised and possessed by the rhythms; they were simply incapable of keeping still on hearing a beating drum—even when played by a beginner like me.
On other occasions, they loved to dance to a different, modern style of Akamba music that you could hear playing loudly from tapes in Kitui village every day. This music is known as benga, and is characterised by lively crisp high electric guitar chords and heavy bass rhythm interludes. Ordinary people never sing it or play it themselves, but they love to listen and dance to its infectious rhythms.
On some afternoons, I hoisted Mutua or Fundi or some of the other children onto the bar of my old bicycle and cycled down to the river to wash clothes. It was marvellous to see how these destitute children were all bonding together—though not always. One hot afternoon, they were all playing football with a ball made from plastic bags tied tightly with string. (The Dutch girls, Ilsa and Yvonne, had left them a proper leather football, but they often preferred the plastic bags because they were easier on their barefeet). Suddenly, World War III broke out among them. The usual suspects got stuck in, including the four who had raped the woman. Within seconds, though, Mutua and even the girls had joined in.
What had caused the free-for-all? I had no idea.
Eventually I got one word out of Mutua: ‘witchcraft.’
When I heard this, I let them at it; I was seriously outnumbered and had my glasses to protect!
‘It often happens here,’ Sr. Concepta explained afterwards. ‘One team is accused of placing a spell on one of the goalposts during the game. They take their witchcraft very seriously.’
‘Now that you mention it,’ I recalled, ‘the score was eight or nine to nil, and the ball did always seem to roll up short for the losing team, or hit the post.’
‘Maybe you have been here too long, Brendan,’ she smiled.
There was another occasion, shortly before I left Kitui, when the children were having a party and everyone was happily dancing and singing. Suddenly, Mutua accused a cheeky boy called Mumo of performing witchcraft on him. Mumo produced a sharp knife in the fight that inevitably ensued. It was only with difficulty that I managed to break it up and prise the knife from his grip. They were both sky-high on glue. With many of the street-children, it was often a matter of two steps forward, two steps back.
A couple of days later, Mumo and a small moody boy called Kilonzo came to my rescue when they stoned a light-green snake they spotted slithering towards me, as I stretched out in the shade of a tree. Kilonzo had been in a foul mood all morning up to then. To thank him for his alertness, I placed my khaki hat over his head and let him wear it. He was a sight. He could hardly see out from under it as it covered his eyes. It cheered him up no end, and he went round impersonating the mzungu for the rest of the day.
That week I heard Kilonzo and Mumo plotting to rob a lemon orchard. I just hoped they would not make a career out of thieving or banditry, as so many street-children do. In the English lesson that morning, I asked my pupils to finish the sentence ‘When I grow up, I want to be … ’ Nduku, the shy little girl who had escaped circumcision, replied,
‘A car.’
She had not understood. Some of the others laughed, and her big eyes grew tearful.
It was Kilonzo who asked the day after, ‘Is your hair real?’ while plucking at my arm.
On another occasion he enquired, ‘Is your father’s skin white?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but my mother’s skin is pink.’
He looked really perplexed until I told him I was just teasing. It was around this time that I picked up a cold. The nights are relatively chilly in Kitui during June and July. When I phoned home, my mother was very concerned—as usual.
‘It could be malaria you have, Brendan. You should get the plane home.’
My cold lingered for a few days, forcing me to stay at home in the evenings. I whiled away another sunset by reading Thomas Pakenham’s fascinating book on colonialism, The Scramble for Africa. From my perch on the verandah, I could hear nearby children singing as the light faded and the stealthy female mosquitoes moved in for a nightcap of blood. Driven indoors, I retired early to bed, but was soon awakened by the sound of gunshots not very far away.
Although used to such nocturnal gunfire in Africa during my year there, it always made me fearful; and it made sound sleep impossible. I just lay there, restless, in the menacing darkness. I was imagining the gunman and his violent mission. I dozed a little. In my semi-conscious state, the gunman got mixed up with the early rifle-toting colonists—images from Pakenham’s book. Then, in the stillness, another familiar sound: the high-pitched and highly irritating buzzing of a solitary mosquito. It was hovering inches from my ear, trying to infiltrate the mosquito net hanging over my bed. Big fears and small irritations meant I awoke next morning from a night without restful slumber.
After a couple of days, I felt perfectly well again and had very mixed feelings about returning home. I had really enjoyed my time volunteering with the street-children, trying to get the best out of each one of them. I had loved working with children the summer I spent at an activity camp in America, but working with Kitui’s abandoned, abused and orphaned children was so much more challenging, and more rewarding because of that. Some of them still had monstrous behavioural problems by the time I left, and other broken children were continuing to arrive on a regular basis. But I had become a father figure to many of them. I could see a difference in them myself. I had a feeling that many—I hope all of them—benefited at least a little from my time with them.
I also came away with the greatest admiration for the nuns who were dedicating their entire lives to giving these children a chance in the world. The sisters were doing truly trojan work in caring for and offering love to children who were not just unloved but, as often as not, abandoned and abused. In educating them, the nuns were also offering them that most precious of gifts: hope.
What was most encouraging was that the children were enthusiastic about education (as indeed they seemed to be everywhere I travelled in East Africa). They were also learning essential life skills beyond the limited curriculum. Despite the sudden, occasionally violent flare-ups, there was a spirit of camaraderie among them. Most were bonding with each other and learning to trust; to trust each other and to trust the sisters. Prior to their arrival at the Centre, their entire life experience had taught them not to trust adults. It took some of them several weeks to come round, but all of them learned to smile again. That, I thought, was the real measure of the nuns’ success.
At my going away party at the Centre in late July, the children and I were dancing for ages to the hypnotic beat of the African drums. As I was leaving, Nduku, Mumo, and Kilonzo came up and shook my hand. In their broken English they murmured shyly,
‘Bwana Kyalo (my Akamba name), thank you … tell your father thank you … we love you … don’t tell your people at home we take glue.’
Then Mutua tugged my shirt. I turned around to him.
‘Are you cycling back to Ireland?’ he whispered in Swahili.
Maybe I was not such a good geography teacher after all.
CHAPTER 24
REFLECTING AT THE END OF TIME
ONE WEEKEND IN THE FIRST HALF of July, I cycled towards Sr. MM’s home having bought a small henhouse from a young skinny lad I happened to meet walking down the dirt track. It was an impulse buy, but it would make a good present. The henhouse was skilfully made from branches and woven ferns. I tied it on to the back of the bicycle, and was pedalling very awkwardly as a result. I did not get too far, however; the combined weight of the henhouse and me was too much for the ancient bicycle. I ended up throwing the bike and the henhouse on the back of a cart pulled by two oxen and two donkeys, as I grabbed a lift up to Sr. MM’s house.
I found Sr. MM in the dining room with Nzinzi, an elderly silver-haired barefoot man whose gummy smile revealed that he was about twenty-eight teeth short of a full set. The Ursuline Sisters have been looking after him since their arrival in 1957, long before Sr. MM came to Kitui. Like many elderly Kenyans, he does not even know the year he was born. He was a product of the last decades of colonialism, a link with a largely forgotten past. While Sr. MM was still busy with Nzinzi, I took a wicker chair outside under a purple-flowering jacaranda tree on the lawn, and began reading A Grain of Wheat by the Kenyan nationalist writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
This historical novel tells a vivid story of Mau Mau resistance to British rule in the period before Kenyan independence in 1963. This would have been the world of Nzinzi’s youth, I reminded myself; he would have been around the age I was at this point. He would probably not think of it as ‘history,’ though. In the novel, a departing colonial laments at one point, that if he ever returned to Kenya in the future, he would never again see that way of life he had known. It set me thinking—about time, history, memory, things moving on.
I knew if I happened to return in ten years, and certainly in twenty years, a new chapter of Kenya’s history will have been written. The country I had visited in 2005 and 2006 will have changed for me in at least one significant respect: I will feel less at home! From the Kitui desert to the Nairobi slums and on to distant Turkana, I had availed of an extensive network of Irish missionaries. They had welcomed, housed and fed me and provided me with contacts on my travels. These were the nuns and priests, now mostly elderly, who had played such a large part in the development of Kenya, post-Independence—and not just in the religious field. As I have witnessed myself, their contribution to the health and educational infrastructure of the young country has been immense.
Now in their sixties and seventies, they and their way of life will soon disappear. As the Kitui headmaster pointed out, the old priests are never replaced by younger men. The Africans themselves will have taken over—which is as it should be and, indeed, was always the plan from decades ago. It is just a pity that the herculean efforts of the Irish missionaries have not received more recognition at home. They surely merit more than the footnote that they will be lucky to get in the histories of their native Ireland. In the modern world of celebrity, these for me are the anonymous heroes and heroines.
In Africa, you are not allowed to be solemn for long. That weekend in July, Sr. MM was throwing a party. There were three Irish missionaries from different parts of Kenya staying with her. They were women of considerable experience and long service, and very good company. That evening, we all sat down to another one of Sr. MM’s meals that I looked forward to so much. The table was perfectly laid out, as if it were for a black-tie function. The food, as always, was much more basic than in Ireland, but, as on every occasion, she surpassed herself with the delicious sauces she conjured up from local ingredients. There was even a small drop of alcohol that she had hunted down in Nairobi; she had been saving it for visitors.
All present were curious to hear what I had made of my time in Kitui District, now that I would be leaving soon. I had to think about it. I told them that I had been somewhat overwhelmed at first by my experiences of Kitui, but that I had quickly been won over by the warmth, decency and joviality of the Akamba people. It was a place full of character and of characters; even the crazies, and there were plenty of them, were mostly entertaining.
As they knew themselves, I kept coming back to Kitui. I had had a vague notion at one point of moving on to the Middle East, and beyond. But of course, I never really left for long. Kitui always exercised its gravitational pull—I had caught the ‘African
bug.’ Everything happens for a reason, as the Africans often say. I had enjoyed my months in Nyumbani, but working with the street-children in Kitui village was probably my most rewarding experience in Africa.
Over dinner, I recounted stories about recent encounters and events, a kaleidoscope of memories I would take home with me: getting a take-away ‘dip fried chicken’ wrapped in the café owner’s bank statement; regretfully declining when being asked by a waiter if I wanted margarine with my beer; laughing at the dance moves to the macarena being performed to an Akamba hymn at Mass; seeing a father and his four small children all perched on one moving bicycle, two of them gripping hens in their hands; encountering young men flying downhill with a hand-pulled cart stacked to the clouds, all looking at me incredulously; feeling like a zoo animal as some Akambas queued up to stare at me reading on the verandah as I listened blissfully to nearby children singing their African songs; watching men running after and jumping onto the moving ‘Lucky Escape’ bus (whose slogan was brightly emblazoned ‘Network Search’—whatever that meant); attempting to repel cats jumping on top of my dinner in a café; being amazed at people selling everything and anything, from hillocks of second-hand tights, to piles of old plastic bottles from higgledy-piggledy stalls by the roadside; enjoying banter with the women stitching garments on the foot-powered sewing machines along the footpaths; frequenting such establishments as ‘The Misplaced Saloon,’ ‘The Precious Iceland Hotel’ and the ‘Mogadishu Complex Shop’; dodging the wide metre-deep pot holes in the footpaths along Kitui main street in the darkness; meeting a black Brendan and several black Brendas …
I would remember too the sinister side of life in Kitui. I would long recall the unsettling sound of gunfire in the night. In late June, locals burned to death some of the bandits (the ‘hole-in-the-wall gang’ we had nicknamed them) who had been terrifying the district for months with raids and hijackings—the very same gang, indeed, who had attempted to stop Sr. MM that night in her car. The police simply informed their families they had been lynched. There would be no question of the mob ever being charged with murder. There was the pitiful sight, too, of convicts in black and white stripes being marched off in chains to prisons where conditions are reputedly horrendous.
No Hurry in Africa Page 30