by Peter Kimani
“These three have made history as the first inmates in the British East Africa Protectorate,” McDonald announced, before starting to drag the man in the middle, pulling the other two along, the network of arms crisscrossing like tangled ropes. The three captives spoke Gujarati, Urdu, and Punjabi, crying out in frustration at their inability to understand each other.
McDonald had neared the mouth of the dungeon when one of the captives let out a raw cry: “Woooooooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” It wasn’t just a cry from the fatigue of the journey, or from the hunger that showed in their eyes—it was the recognition of their base humiliation. They had survived horrendous calamities at sea, only to land in this hellhole. It was hard to discern who among the three had cried out first, but it echoed against the walls, building in tempo and resonance so that the three men’s voices came together as one. The response from the other workers was instant.
They, too, cried out: “Woooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” The blustering gale appeared to carry the cry and cast it to the sea, resurging moments later with more intensity. The water lapping on the shores seemed to sweep the cry and multiply it a thousand times. The crashing waves appeared to roar in anger bearing the cry, as did the smallest and weakest of waves that diminished as they approached the shores, crashing into frothy foam on the white sand.
Babu started walking toward McDonald. He wanted to help translate what the three captives were saying, but a group of technicians followed in his step. They were waiting for someone to step forward and fire the first shot before they could join in. Their walk found traction with the workers’ cries, each step synchronized with the sound.
“Woooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Wooooooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiii.”
Babu was now very close to McDonald.
“Wooooooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Wooooooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiii.”
McDonald moved his lips but he did not speak. He could swear Babu’s face looked very familiar, but he couldn’t quite place him. Where had he seen that massive forehead? The men marched faster than his mind could spring a response. McDonald blew the whistle again but he appeared to be out of breath and only a whimper was heard. His lips trembled. By now, most of the marching workers held crude weapons in their hands, retrieved from the assortment of tools in their possession. They were armed with crowbars and saws and mallets and pliers and pincers and machetes and hammers. Local men who had been hired as porters joined in the march. Even the palm trees that had stood silent on the shores for hundreds of years appeared to open their mouths for the first time, the rustling of their leaves adding a lively soprano to the song. The traders and their customers and the mongrels in fright seemed to join in the wail, gaining such momentum that even the vessel standing at sea appeared to jerk, as though in the grip of an epileptic fit.
“Wooooooooooooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.”
McDonald released the captives from his grasp and retrieved his pistol. He shot once in the air. The sound was so muted, it was like cracking firewood on a bent knee. McDonald fired all the rounds until his gun was empty. The shooting only managed to scare sparrows out of their nests to join in the song.
“Wooooooooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Woooooooooooooo—iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.”
The sparrows somersaulted and performed all manner of aerial displays. McDonald ran in panic into the dungeon. He scaled the steps to the watchtower with the stealth of a spider. He reached the armory and headed straight to the cannon whose mouth jutted out toward the sea. He fired the cannon once.
* * *
Yet again, a new legend had been invented, and for days and weeks and months to come, young men sat under the mnazi and listened to Nyundo tell and retell the story of the day the cannon was fired. There is nothing the Swahili enjoyed more than a well-told story.
“Wacha kiswahili!” one would shout lightheartedly at Nyundo when they suspected he was conflating the order of events, which most loved doing.
“Wallahi! I’m telling you, I saw it with these two eyes,” Nyundo would counter, waving a hand to ward off a fly hovering over his cup of black tea, before taking a swig and belching with satisfaction. “I swear, haki ya mama. I’m telling you nothing but the truth,” Nyundo would insist, then invoke the serious consequences that could befall him if he lied—including bedding his own mother.
Very few Africans had witnessed the firing of the cannon. When the melee started, most of the porters had retreated, for they had a saying about keeping a safe distance in the face of a disaster, lest blood be spilled on them.
“Sikiza,” Nyundo narrated, “I never knew I would live to see such a day. You know, these white people made us retreat with tails between our legs, after displaying their small pieces of metal emitting smoke. We treated them like little gods. Now I know they’re nothing! Their medicine is muhindi. The Indian, I tell you, is bad news. Just leave him alone! He’s the cure for the white man’s oppression. I saw an Indian give a white man a taste of that medicine, with these very eyes . . .
“Aisee! Chai! Chai hala hala!” Nyundo shouted, ordering a fresh cup of tea. “I want these people to understand the story, and my voice is getting croaky with fatigue. Chai hala hala!”
A fresh cup delivered, Nyundo sipped, then went on. “Ushaona bwana?” he asked to call his audience to attention. Although Nyundo did not know Babu by name, he accurately described his pronounced forehead. “Sokwe mtu,” he said, then reenacted how the Indian had marched toward the mzungu holding a gun and demanded the immediate release of the three wailing Indian workers.
“And Bwana Mkubwa, the one whose clothes competed with the sun for brightness, trembled like a leaf as this Indian man walked toward him. Not a very tall man, but intimidating enough. I think he had planned to use the forehead to smash the white man. But the mzungu was wetting his pants with fear.”
Nyundo sipped his tea again. “I was just seated there with my drum as this Indian jinni marched on. Bwana Mkubwa, his mustache doing its dance because he was terrified out of his wits, got his small chuma and fired at the approaching Indian. Phaw! Phaw! Phaw! One, two, three—”
“Pumping bullets like that?” somebody in the audience interjected. “Weee, Nyundo, stop your kiswahili.”
“Sikiza bwana,” Nyundo pleaded. “I’m telling you, haki ya mama. In the name of my mother. Risasi, phaw, phaw, phaw! But this Indian jinni was not feeling anything. It’s as though the bullets couldn’t penetrate his skin. They just zoomed past and fell into the ocean or melted in the air.”
“Not a single bullet hit him?” another voice asked.
“Not a single one of them. That’s why Bwana Mkubwa took off and disappeared into the building.”
“Did he go there to hide?”
“No, just wait and listen. I’m the one telling the story. Listen. Listen, my friend. If anybody ever told you there is a louder blast than a cannon’s, they are telling a lie,” Nyundo continued. “Mark my word: a cannon blast has no equivalent; it is the mother of all blasts.” Nyundo claimed that sparrows suspended their fluttering to listen to the blast, for they had never heard such a sound. The roaring sea waves, he said, flattened out to duck the cannon fire so that the sea lay flat like a mirror reflecting the sun above.
“I think the sea must have acquired a similar plane when that famous prophet that Cow Man preacher was talking about walked on water. The palm trees dropped all their fruit—mature, immature, raw, and ripe.” Nyundo dropped his voice and said sotto voce, “Like a woman losing a pregnancy.” Then, resuming his narration in a well-modulated tone: “The swinging branches were suspended in midair, the leaves arched awkwardly like a dreadlocked head . . . Maajabu!
“If you see muhindi, hats off to him, man. The Indian is the medicine for the white man. Since I witnessed that, I have stopped fearing the white man,” Nyundo concluded, ordering another cup of chai. “Good tea brings the brain to a boil.”
6
McDonald recorded the events of that day, August 2, 1897, a
s the first organized labor protest in the British East Africa Protectorate. A career soldier, McDonald was experienced in information management. Had he called it a mutiny or even a siege, he knew his bosses in London would have been hysterical, perhaps even recalling the colonial governor, Charles Erickson, who was en route from the colonial capital of Nairobi, some five hundred miles away, to commission the railway construction in Mombasa. So McDonald only volunteered information that would be beneficial to his interests, and his key interest was to have the rail construction commence.
McDonald still trembled when he remembered the moment Babu marched toward him. He knew he had seen that forehead elsewhere. He thought maybe he was a porter sent to deliver an urgent message to him, but he wasn’t carrying anything. When McDonald saw the other Indian workers join in the march, he realized he’d been wrong.
There was something terrifying about the forehead. It took one’s attention off the eyes, so one lost focus and couldn’t quite tell where the forehead appeared to be headed. That initial misinterpretation of Babu’s intent would sow seeds of discord and blossom into a grudge that would last a lifetime.
The scare also prompted McDonald to do what soldiers call “going back to the drawing board.” To grasp what he was up against, he needed to understand the local scene. He knew he would find ample information from the notes left by his predecessor, Captain John Adams, whose file he had put off reading.
From: Captain John Adams, Outgoing Commissioner of the British East Africa Protectorate
To: Ian Edward McDonald, Commissioner of the British East Africa Protectorate
Date: December 12, 1896
Receive my greetings, many as the sands in the ocean, or the leaves in a bush! That’s my way of saying I have lived here long enough to acquire local sensibilities, like their exaggerated manner of speech. Welcome to Mombasa!
I must state from the onset that this place has lived up to its reputation as a destination that’s easy to travel to, but hard to depart from. I fully concur with those sentiments. So, don’t say you were not warned about the allure of the place . . .
Things did not seem that way when I arrived that distant evening two years ago in the company of two mules and two men. You shall inherit the two mules, but you cannot inherit the men—one Wanyika man, although I hear they consider that name derogatory and insist you call them the Giriama, and one Kikuyu tribesman. You cannot inherit the men because they have since deserted. The only reason I’m sharing this information is to ensure you don’t hire them back, or even hire their kinsmen to run your domestic affairs. They are bad people.
The Kikuyu tribesman that I hired as a cook, apart from being lazy like all the natives, had this dreamy look that I found scary. I later came to learn that any Kikuyu, while serving you, is always scheming as to how he will steal from you so that one day he can sit at the table and be served by others. The Wanyika or Giriama tribesman that I hired as a gardener was so lazy he cut down my trees so that he didn’t have to sweep the compound every morning!
But I am digressing. See, like I said at the start of this letter, it’s been such a long two years I have acquired the natives’ roundabout ways of speaking! What I mean to say is that you should arrive here in good cheer because you shall find many cheerful and cheering things. First off, Mombasa is a complicated place. It’s an old port town that goes back several centuries, but it seems to be stuck there—frozen in time is a good way to think of it. The Portuguese, or Wareno, as natives call them, arrived in the fifteenth century. The Arabs came hot on their heels. The Portuguese brought corn to Mombasa. The Arabs shipped away all the grains. When the grains were in short supply, they started abducting natives for sale. The Indians and the Chinese have been here all along, doing their business in their usual shady way, which means you can’t quite understand what they do, yet they are forever lurking.
I think you are now starting to get the picture that I’m trying to paint. You can think of Mombasa as a petri dish of cultures, and the end result has been many uncultured people put together because they seem to pick the worst from everyone. You might ask why I find that troubling, yet it is our work to civilize them. As long as we have uncivilized natives somewhere in the world, an Englishman’s work is guaranteed. But the degree of their uncouth behavior can be startling, even overwhelming at times.
I don’t know if I mentioned the port of Mombasa has a quaint feel, reminiscent of Britain’s port towns, like Brighton or Southampton. I should add that the local social scene is remarkably close to that of ancient Athens, where locals spent their days arguing about nothing. There are similar groupings in Mombasa, particularly among Afro-Arabs, or Swahili as they are known here. It’s a group that has emerged from the intercourse between Arabs and Africans, and they seem to be copulating all the time because they have spawned a whole new nation, complete with its own language. A sprinkling of Indians will be found in such idle gatherings, but the real loudmouths are the Afro-Arabs. They will sit and talk about anything under the sun. It could be a silly argument about which fruit is ripe enough to eat. But rather than settle such a mundane issue by climbing up the tree, they shall wait for the fruit to fall. That means they might spend several days arguing about a specific fruit, while waiting for nature’s intervention!
You may be tempted to ask why I’m telling you all this. It’s because the malingering crowds have serious implications on local labor supply. These meetings—or vikao, as the Afro-Arabs call them—have negatively impacted our local labor supply. Finding laborers for paid work is extremely frustrating, and remember we are talking of horrible, lazy, thieving natives, not quality workers. They cannot be forced to work, even on the pain of death. Their attitude toward work is amazingly unhealthy. This is partly because farm work is considered a woman’s task. Real men go to the forest to hunt. It’s only women who bend their backs and battle with the soil. A contingent of local porters were so ridiculed for carrying loads on their heads—other men said they resembled women returning from the stream to fetch water—that the entire expedition disappeared into the bush with our merchandise still on their heads. Of course, the thieves in their midst were looking for any excuse to flee.
The other factors for poor labor supply are grave. Since the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, Arabs and their local henchmen, mainly the Wakamba and Wanyika or Giriama, as they prefer to be called, have discovered new destinations for their human cargo. The sultan of Zanzibar, Seyyid Said, has established clove plantations in his country to recoup the income lost from the slave trade.
The clove plant, I should say, is a spice in the garlic family. It is a labor-intensive crop since harvesting is done year-round and each clove cluster has to be harvested by hand without damaging the branch. This is followed by days of drying before selling. The plant behaves like a chameleon, changing colors—from purple when still in the bud, to green when cut, and brown when dried. Let me tell you why you need to know all this, or even why we should care if it takes slaves on Arab plantations a year to harvest a handful of cloves.
The sultan of Zanzibar owns the coastline, so it is in our best interests not to antagonize him unnecessarily. When our men in London insisted we should not tolerate slavery of any nature, I was encouraged to offer modest recompense to Arab slave masters for every slave released. That’s something you may have to continue. Secondly, Afro-Arabs have a measure of experience in administration—albeit gained by riding roughshod over others—and we need them to establish our administration in the hinterland.
Which leads me to my first proposition: given the complex histories around the coast, we have to find ways of accessing the hinterland population, which by far exceeds the transient and economically superior groups of Indians and Afro-Arabs. I shall address this question more substantively in a short while. But first, allow me to elaborate on the social scene.
As if we didn’t have enough problems on our hands, nature unleashed her wrath upon the land. We experienced a crushing famine for th
e two years that I have been here. I suspect the superstitious natives must already have concluded that the disappearance of the rain has something to do with our presence in their midst. Which is not a particularly bad thing for them to believe! If they think we have the capacity to meddle with the rhythms of nature, they might be more receptive to our instructions. I did not have a lot of success with that.
We brought in a psychoanalyst from London with the hope that we could understand the degree of superstition among the locals. He had a clever sampling methodology that required respondents to narrate the kind of dreams they had been having since the arrival of the white man. Since dreams often draw from the subconscious, we had hoped to find out if their dreams would reveal their attitude toward us. But all the natives said they had stopped dreaming since we set foot here! So that’s the sort of cunning you shall be dealing with! It’s inborn for a majority of the natives.
But the worst was yet to come. When we saw things go from bad to worse due to the famine, we decided to do something. We went to the hinterland and conducted a malnutrition survey. We mapped some 50 families accounting for about 2,000 children and adults. Out of these, about 30 percent did not have enough to eat, meaning they had an occasional meal every few days, while 10 percent suffered acute malnutrition, most of them children. We instituted measures to mitigate the situation by shipping in corn from India, which had probably originated in this place. The monsoon winds couldn’t have been better. But our intervention was a bag of mixed fortunes.
Natives flatly declined to receive the grains, fearing it was an inducement to lure them into captivity and slavery. This, it has come to our attention, is an offshoot of the unorthodox methods used by Arabs over the past years. The waterfront of Watamu, I am told, derives its name from the sweet dates that the merchants dangled before capturing natives for shipment abroad. So they feared our gift of grains and no one would touch the corn.