Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  When their search for medicine was exhausted, the two women then gathered firewood, tying dried sticks into enormous bundles and hoisting them onto their backs and attaching them by straps across their foreheads. The loads were so heavy that the grandmother and granddaughter were bent nearly double, their faces pointing to the ground. With the elder in the lead, balancing her burden with the practice of seventy years, the two trudged the dusty track back to the village, which lay many spear throws away, a distance which the white man called five miles.

  As she walked, young Wachera thought about her husband. Would Mathenge come to the village tonight? She had last seen him when third wife had given birth. By Kikuyu law the husband could not see the baby until he had given his wife a goat. Mathenge had come, so tall and slender in his single red blanket knotted over one shoulder. He no longer carried a spear because white man's law now forbade warriors to do so; in its place he carried a walking stick, which made him look important.

  In the course of her daily work—fetching water from distant pockets in the dried-up river, harvesting puny onions and withered maize cobs from her garden, milking the goats, curing the hides, sweeping the huts, repairing the roof— Wachera had espied her husband up on the ridge. He often sat in the shade of a tree talking with other Kikuyu men; sometimes she heard him laugh with the white man. And when he did come home, he would sit in his bachelor's hut, where women were forbidden to enter, and regale his brothers and male cousins with talk of the mzungu's new shamba.

  Wachera's curiosity about the strangers was growing. She had paused on several occasions in her work to watch the strange mzunga who was erecting a mysterious structure downriver. It was but four posts with a thatch roof. And the white woman wore baffling attire. Not an inch of flesh was open to the air and sun; she appeared to be bound up, like a baby in its sling, with only her black skirt being loose and dragging in the dirt. Impractical clothing, the Kikuyu woman thought, for such hot weather.

  The mzunga gave orders to the men who worked for her, members of Wachera's own clan, men who had once been warriors but who were now building a white woman's hut and calling her Memsaab Daktari, "Mistress Doctor."

  Wachera wondered what age-group the daktari belonged to. Her own age-group was called Kithingithia because they had been initiated in the year of the Swelling Sickness, which the white men called "flu" and said had occurred in 1910. Since they appeared to be close in age, Wachera wondered if the daktari had been circumcised in the same year. And if so, did that make them sisters in blood?

  The memsaab further puzzled Wachera in that she was clearly one of the white man's wives and yet she had no babies. All the village commented on how wealthy Bwana Lordy must be, considering the size of the shamba he was clearing, and that he had no fewer than seven wives. The Kikuyu did not know that their tally took in Lord Treverton's sister, his wife's personal maid, Mona's nanny, two parlormaids, a seamstress, and a cook, all brought out from England. So many wives, the Africans declared, but only one toto, one baby, among them. And not a belly on any of the women! Were the wives barren? Why didn't he sell them back to their fathers? Such useless creatures. Surely there was bad luck here. Bwana Lordy would be wise to find another witch doctor.

  One thing puzzled young Wachera even more about the new bwana. She knew that there had been a big war between two wazungu tribes and that it had lasted eight harvests. Bwana Lordy had come back from the war to erect his cloth huts and drive metal monsters to clear the forest. And now his wives had come; most likely some of them were women captured in raids during the war. But ... where was the cattle? What kind of warrior returned from war without the enemy's cattle?

  Finally Wachera's thoughts moved away from the white man and returned to her husband.

  How could she get him to come back to her? Even though the harvest was meager and the goats skinny, Wachera would prepare for him a feast. She would give him the last of her good beer and be uncomplaining and submissive. If only he would come! She considered asking her grandmother for a love potion to give secretly to Mathenge but knew that the elder had more important things to deal with.

  There was going to be a rain sacrifice at the sacred fig tree.

  Wachera remembered the last time such a ceremony had been conducted because she had been chosen to take part in it. Only clean and blameless members of the clan could participate: elders who had outlived their worldly desires and thought only of the spiritual; women who were past childbearing and were therefore no longer perpetrators of lust; and children under the age of eight because they were pure in heart and untainted by sin.

  The ceremony had taken place at the foot of the very fig tree which was the heart of Wachera's little village. It was reckoned to be a very ancient tree and had proved its blessedness by saving the family from sickness and hunger in the year Wachera Moved Across the River. Young Wachera had no doubt that when the rain ceremony was conducted this time, the ancestors who lived in the venerated fig tree would send the rain.

  The two women reached the river and followed its trickling bed toward their village on the north bank. When they came through the trees, elder Wachera let out a cry. A gigantic iron monster with a man riding its back was pushing down third wife's hut.

  Elder Wachera shouted to the man riding the monster, a Masai in khaki shorts who dismissed the old woman but eyed the young one with interest. As the iron beast chuffed and belched and ground the hut beneath its feet, the grandmother placed herself in its path until the Masai driver halted the animal and stilled its roar.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded.

  He replied first in Masai, then in Swahili, and finally in English, none of which the two women understood. Then he said, "Mathenge," and gestured up to the ridge.

  There the tall and handsome warrior stood looking down. At his side, also watching, stood the white bwana.

  7

  I

  F MEMSAAB DAKTARI WILL PARDON," THE KIKUYU HEADMAN said, "a square house is bad luck. Evil spirits will live in the corners. Only a round house is safe."

  Grace gazed at the clearing where work was finally, after seven months, beginning on her cottage and said patiently, "It's all right, Samuel. I prefer a square house."

  He walked away, shaking his head. Although Samuel Wahiro was a Christianized Kikuyu and one of the few who wore European clothes and spoke English, he was completely baffled by the ways of the white man.

  Grace watched him go, thinking what walking paradoxes these converted Africans were. Outwardly they appeared to have been completely Westernized, but their minds and souls were still rooted in Kikuyu superstition.

  She looked at the bare beginnings of her little house and felt a thrill of excitement. She had not thought, back in March, when she had settled into her tent in Valentine's camp, that it would be so long before she had her own home. But everything seemed to have conspired against progress: the drought, which had required the full work force to concentrate on Valentine's coffee fields; frequent Kikuyu festivals and beer drinks that had called the workers away for days at a time; and then, when they did work, a slow pace that was maddeningly un-British. But at last her little clinic was up—four posts and a thatch roof, plus a large, square mud hut for patients whom she wanted to monitor—and now her house could be started.

  She had sketched a simple plan for the workers to follow, and she came down every morning from the tent camp to see that they got started. As a result, the early quiet around the river was disturbed by the incessant clamor of hammer and saw, as beams were cut and shaped, foundations laid, doors fashioned. Up on the hill, Bella Two already stood one story tall, and now a team worked almost night and day on the second level. The noise from the two construction sites was such that Grace almost believed the two work crews were competing to be the louder.

  She looked up at the dirt track that came down from the ridge. Sir James had said he would pick her up in his new truck shortly after dawn, and it was nearly seven now.

  Grace was goi
ng into Nairobi to meet with the Principal Medical Officer, to see what could be done about educating the Africans in nutrition and hygiene. Seven months ago, upon her arrival with Rose and the baby, Grace had gone out with an interpreter to take a look at the local people. What she had discovered—the poor health, the custom of sleeping with goats, the overwhelming flies—had shocked and dismayed her. Grace had come to British East Africa with a trunkful of medicines, bandages, and sutures, but these were of little use, she had realized, in the face of such severe malnutrition, endemic disease, and generally appalling condition of the people.

  Here, she decided, was where her work among the Kikuyu would begin—not in her clinic with its tongue depressors and thermometers but on the homesteads and around the cookfires. The Africans had to be taught that it was their way of life, not evil spirits, that was the cause of their illness and suffering.

  Although Grace had been told in a letter from the Principal Medical Officer that there weren't enough trained men to go around and that she was on her own in this area, she was going into Nairobi to try to get help.

  She heard the grind of a motor and saw the dust trail behind Sir James's truck. Four Africans rode in the back; they would hack a trail for the truck, maneuver it through bogs and over obstacles, and guard it in Nairobi's lawless streets. With luck they should reach Nairobi, ninety miles away, by sunset.

  As Grace climbed into the cab next to Sir James, she saw the young African woman—the medicine woman's granddaughter—standing at the edge of the new clearing, watching her.

  THE HORSES BURST over the hill at a furious gallop, hooves thundering, riders arcing high in the air with a skillful handling of rein and stirrup. Lord Treverton was near the front, a dashing figure in scarlet Savile Row jacket, white riding breeches, and black top hat. He felt as if he were riding over the roof of the world. The morning was cool and sharp; dew lay like a sparkling blanket on the biscuit-colored grass. His pulse raced; he was alive. He felt invincible.

  Brigadier Norich-Hastings, master of the hunt, was in the lead, following a pack of forty hounds; next to him rode the huntsman, a Kikuyu named Kipanya who, although dressed in red shirt and black velvet cap, clung barefoot to the stirrups. Kipanya controlled the hounds by his voice, having been trained by Norich-Hastings in the ancient "cheers" of the sport, and by his copper horn. Three whippers-in kept the dogs together. These men were also African, wore the prestigious red and white uniform of the hunt, and rode shoeless. Behind them came the guests of Brigadier Norich-Hastings, the "smart set" of British East Africa, who raced across the Athi Plains outside Nairobi as if it were an English countryside. Indeed, the hunt was in every detail true to tradition, down to the grooms, second horsemen, terrier men, and earth stoppers, with the small variation that they chased not a fox but a jackal.

  They had begun at dawn, with a meet on Brigadier Norich-Hastings's front lawn, where hot tea and scones had been served. On command from the master, the hounds had moved out to search for the quarry; they had given out a cry when the jackal was scented, and Norich-Hastings had shouted, "Tally ho!" The cream of British East Africa society had galloped off behind the pack, some cursing the extra bottle of champagne the night before, but all in excellent spirits and secure in the certainty of their supremacy over all of creation.

  Valentine rode Excalibur, his imported Arab stallion. Next to him was His Excellency the Governor, who was followed by Count Duschinksi, a Polish expatriate. Rose was not at the hunt; in fact, she had not come down to Nairobi at all this time but had asked to be allowed to stay home, where she could escape, she had said, the fierce September heat. Valentine had very much wanted her to come with him but had not insisted. Even back in England Rose had not enjoyed riding to hounds, her sympathy always going to the poor fox. Rose's excessive fondness for animals was beginning to extend to forest orphans, such as hyraxes and monkeys, which she had turned into pets.

  The horses and ponies gathered speed across the plain. The thrill of the chase mounted; the element of danger became intense. Only last Sunday the hounds had treed a snarling leopard, and the master, who always carried a revolver, had had to shoot it. And although there were no Suffolk hedges or treacherous streams to cross, African fox hunting was still fraught with hazard; last May Colonel Mayshed's horse had stumbled in an unseen pig hole and had sent its rider flying headfirst to meet his death.

  It was nearly nine o'clock now; the sun was rising and growing hot over the yellow, scorched plain. Lack of rain had turned the protectorate into a bleak, God-abandoned land of bleaching skeletons, starved cattle, withered crops. But the hunt was good, the company lively and witty, and a grand breakfast awaited them at the end.

  All of a sudden the hounds stopped running and dropped back. When the horses drew up, rearing and whinnying amid the pack of confused dogs, the riders saw a large cock ostrich emerge from the dry bush. He fanned out his wings and ran toward the dogs, which retreated with yelps. Kipanya and the brigadier tried to control them, but the ostrich, making threatening feints toward the pack, had them cowed.

  "Look!" cried Lady Bolson. A small flock of baby ostriches stumbled from the bush. Lady Anne's husband, the viscount, reached inside his jacket and produced a vest-pocket Kodak, with which he promptly took a snapshot.

  A moment later the female ostrich appeared. The two parents rounded up the babies, and the family cantered off, leaving behind a knot of milling hounds and laughing riders. The hunt was over.

  Tables had been set on the veranda of Brigadier Norich-Hastings's large sisal estate house; china and crystal and white tablecloths shone like beacons to the exhausted but happy riders. Norich-Hastings's staff of Africans, overseen by his wife, Lady Margaret, stood ready in long white kanzus with scarlet sashes around their waists. As the guests climbed the steps of the veranda, wiping their foreheads and laughing over the ostrich incident, the servants immediately started to draw back chairs, assist with napkins, pour the tea. The food was then brought out of the house—silver trays laden with slices of pawpaw and banana, bowls of steaming porridge, platters of fried eggs and crisp bacon—and the company broke into animated conversation.

  "I was charged by a buffalo last week," came the booming voice of Captain Draper of the King's African Rifles. "One of my Wakamba chaps told me it meant that my wife had a lover. So I replied that it must be bloody dangerous to go on safari during Race Week in Nairobi as surely the whole country is full of rampaging buffalo!"

  Those at his table roared while at the next a more sober dialogue was taking place. "All this pushing for giving the Asians the vote. And the bloody gall of them to demand the right to settle the Highlands! I maintain that the protectorate is a white daughter of the Crown and not an Asian granddaughter. They've got India. Let 'em go back if they're not happy with the way things are run here. To my mind British East Africa is exactly that: a place where British ideals, civilization, traditions, and way of life must prevail. I say, keep the Highlands white!"

  Valentine was only half listening. His pulse had not slowed from the furious ride; he could barely sit still. He was anxious to be starting the ninety-mile journey homeward, restless to take his surprise to Rose. The segment of population that had come out in 1896 to build the Uganda Railway, laborers imported from India, and that had stayed on afterward as shopkeepers and office workers, did not interest the earl. The Asians were pressing His Majesty's government to grant them an equal vote with the whites in the protectorate and for the right to settle in the Highlands, East Africa's choicest land, which stretched from Nairobi to well past the Treverton Estate. The handful of Europeans were fighting to keep them out.

  "The answer is to press for colonial status," said a young man wearing a soft terai with the side brim turned up and pinned with an official badge. "Lord Delamere's right. If we were to be made a colony, then we would be formally annexed to Britain, which would endow the Crown with legal authority to dispose of the land however it wished. As a protectorate we're practically orphans. But as
a colony we would have to be listened to."

  Valentine reached for the marmalade and spread it generously on his toast. Fresh butter, cream, and cheese were on the table; even Nairobi coffee and Darjeeling tea! Back in England serious postwar rationing was in full force; here in the protectorate prices had gone very high, imported goods were scarce, and the average farmer was struggling by on a day-to-day subsistence. But Brigadier Norich-Hastings's sisal estate was doing well, and so the retired officer could afford to deck out his tables in lavish style.

  Valentine wished Sir James had come with him. His friend could do with a holiday and a chance to taste some decent food. Life on Kilima Simba, the Donald farm, was plain and hard. There was Lucille, managing two little boys and a baby girl, toiling from sunup to past sundown, making her own yeast, boiling jams to sell for a few extra rupees, mending clothes that Valentine thought should go for rags, while her husband spent the day in the saddle, inspecting his large herd, battling against an increasingly diminishing water supply, supervising cattle dips, constantly on the alert for tick-borne diseases, and making sure his chaps worked and didn't sneak off for a beer drink. Sir James was not wealthy by Lord Treverton's standards, but he was the most honest and hardworking man Valentine had ever met. If death had claimed James in that ghastly incident near the German East Africa border—and the army surgeons had declared it a miracle that he had survived—if James had died, it would have been a keen loss to East Africa. A knighthood had been James Donald's compensation for valor beyond human expectations; it seemed to Valentine not nearly enough.