Dance of the Jakaranda

by Peter Kimani

  Now, if you thought that was surprising, listen to this: the Wanyika natives, who have been hardest hit by famine, and who wouldn’t touch a grain offered by a white hand, have been pawning their wives and daughters to Arab merchants in exchange for grains. The deal is that once their fortunes improve, they shall pay off their debts and their women will be returned to them. I cannot grasp, for the life of me, the logic behind such actions. But apparently, it is a time-tested tradition and families that fall on hard times have no hesitation pawning wives or daughters.

  Yet other natives have migrated to farmlands near the Sabaki River and have succeeded to such a degree that they are able to supply their tribesmen in other parts of the hinterland. This is demonstrable evidence that natives, if subjected to stringent conditions, can start to use their heads to survive. I have always had this lingering question, wondering if the natives would have fared differently if they had freezing temps throughout the year instead of the blistering heat. I mean, they certainly wouldn’t be walking about naked, or waiting for fruit to fall from the trees. They would have found ways to dress warmly and perhaps store food for a snowy day.

  I think I’m giving these natives more credit than they actually deserve for just being able to put food on the table. After all, even birds, which have no hands and only very tiny heads, possess adequate imagination to marshal such feats. Anyway, I’m digressing yet again. I guess all I’m trying to say is that I have had such low expectations of the locals that whatever modest thing they achieve does not escape my notice. So that rare demonstration of initiative by natives on the banks of the Sabaki stands out for this reason.

  It might surprise you, therefore, if I tell you even this cultivation on the banks of the Sabaki has put us on a collision course with the locals. Yes, we have a problem when natives sit and talk, and we have a problem when they rise and work!

  Here’s why: The Wanyika’s, or the Giriama’s, homes are organized in enclosures. Several of these form a village, under which a council of elders arbitrates over community disputes from a kaya. You must be aware now about the superstition associated with primitive cultures. Even if you have encountered that elsewhere, the mother of them all is to be found here. The kaya, the Wanyika believe, is the hallowed seat of their god, and they feed the trees with meat and honey. I suspect it is this healthy nourishment that led the figs in those kayas to grow to such gigantic scales that several men cannot hold the girth of one such tree. The people have mortal fear of those elders, while the fear of someone bewitching another is so commonplace that you will find children wearing protective amulets from birth to keep them out of harm’s way.

  This offers a chance for us to tap into this illogic psychology and make inroads in turning natives’ minds in another direction. Reverend Turnbull is doing a good job of it, and he’s a man I propose you should meet and get to know. He is with the Church Mission Society and has a native lad he uses for translation. Not particularly good, but something is better than nothing.

  I seem to have lost my train of thought again about native superstition. Oh yes, now I remember . . . The migration to the Sabaki settlement by the Giriama has eroded the influence of the elders over the youth because they have left the kaya in their old village. Without the kaya and its associated mystic power, fathers have no say over their sons’ affairs. In turn, the elders’ influence over the community’s spiritual and political welfare is waning. This means that if we are to make demands on the community as a whole—for instance, taxation—there is no central authority to impose sanctions. So if the young men choose to talk and wait for fruit to fall on their heads, the parents cannot compel them to do anything. Further, if the loose coalition of elders was the ineffectual pillar of administration, things will only get harder because they have dispersed to the four directions of the wind.

  The most immediate battle, which you will have no choice but to wage, is over the Sabaki settlement. I am certain you are familiar with the Imperial British East Africa (IBEA). You must have encountered them in your previous work in India. I think they traded there as British India Steam Navigation Company Limited. Now, these gentlemen and their affiliates have an eye on the Sabaki. They think they can invest in rice cultivation. Now, that is what we call hitting two birds with one stone. On the one hand, you would have something to ship off, and make use of the rail once it is laid, and then there is the European capital injection, which should attract even more investors from England and the larger Europe. Even Americans won’t hesitate to invest once IBEA comes in. But what stands in the way is how to get natives out of their new settlements and get them to engage in wage labor. That’s the only way to get the railway laid. I think you should use this line as your mantra to all the natives: Get off the land, get on rail!

  Finally, here are some suggestions on how to proceed. These are random thoughts just bubbling off the top of my head, and may appear incoherent or utterly useless. Feel free to discard what you can’t use. But they are worth thinking through. For starters, you can impose a tax. Make every household pay, and demand that those who default will be taken off to work on the rail for free. No one can claim this to be slavery, or a replacement of slavery, because they have the option of working for a wage.

  The other way is to appoint headmen and use them to collect the tax—hoping they won’t steal all of it—so that public resentment, if any, will be directed at them, not you. The other suggestion is banning the killing of the wildlife. The Wanyika hunt elephants for their tusks to sell to Arabs, or to buy trophies from other tribes for sale on the coast. Reducing their ways of earning a living is the safest guarantee that they will be available for wage labor. If all these mechanisms fail to get the Wanyika to work for you, you can undermine their capacity to produce food. Although this is not said too loudly, there are ways in which we can decimate their domestic animals. Rinderpest is one. Fleas can also immobilize the natives en masse because they do not wear shoes. And when all else fails, violence is still a viable option. There is no better medicine to native obstinacy than a good beating.

  As I said, these ideas are random and might not hold up to scrutiny. But they are worth sharing.

  All the best, my dear friend. Best wishes in your new job. Don’t hesitate to ask should you need any further information. The only caveat is that you should be prepared to get tons of rambling before you can get anything of value from this compatriot who seems to have been on the verge of going native, in a manner of speaking. To use a common local expression, I hope you and I will meet in this life, in London or some other station elsewhere in the Empire, for we are people, not mountains. Mountains do not meet because they can’t move.

  Yours Sincerely,

  John Adams

  McDonald had picked up many useful lessons from the day of the riot, the most crucial being that brute force was the only language that the locals and the newly arrived Indians understood. And to ensure that locals and Indians did not join hands, McDonald formulated what he called a divide-and-rule policy. A new compartment was created in the dungeons. Now there were three dungeons, with White at the top, Brown in the middle, and Black at the bottom. He decided to wait and gauge the Arabs’ attitudes. If they were hostile to the British presence, he would lump them together with Africans in the Black section. But if they behaved properly, they would be categorized as Brown and grouped with the Indians.

  McDonald then turned his attention to Babu. His training at Sandhurst told him the man was up to no good. So he applied the principle that he learned long ago at military school in England: dig up as much information on your opponent as possible, and you have halved the problem. McDonald considered his options: Deporting Babu to Punjab was one of them, but the monsoon would not be blowing westerly for another four months. And that would mean a free ride when Babu hadn’t earned it. Such rascals should be made to walk back home. But if he waited for the monsoon to reverse its direction, the conspiracy to abort the railway construction that he suspected was being hatched wo
uld mature, if not immediately nipped in the bud. McDonald considered detaining Babu at the fort. Finding an appropriate charge should present no problem whatsoever. The description of the colonial government as “the long arm of the law” was not invented for nothing. If he wanted Babu really quickly, he could pick him for something minor like urinating in the open. This misdemeanor attracted a raft of charges under English law, from indecent exposure to threatening a breach of public peace.

  But McDonald knew he could extract his pound of flesh if he caught Babu defecating. In addition to all the charges one incurred from the misdemeanor of urinating in public, defecating in public carried the additional charge of jeopardizing public health through poor hygiene and unsafe waste disposal. And Babu could be kept in prison as a quarantine measure. Hey, coolie, finish off and let’s go! McDonald relished the thought of Babu caught with pants down, dragged away on tiptoe by a policeman whose grip at the back of his pants ensured the suspect’s manhood would be on the brink of strangulation. Defecation was a charge no magistrate could dispute, and Indians appeared to enjoy the breeze in their most natural form.

  Detention without trial was another option still open to him. The English common law permitted that. All he needed was to prove the suspect was a threat to British national interests, and the railway construction fell within that realm. The wealth of the British East Africa Protectorate could not be accessed without the rail, and the British government expected a return on its investment. But that strategy was fraught with risks: Babu could be turned into a martyr and symbol for future protests. That could be problematic if Babu’s band of supporters—and McDonald had no way of assessing how many there were—rallied to his cause. The locals appeared to communicate with the Indians in ways he could not decipher, and he didn’t wish to be caught flat-footed again. That was a scary experience! He didn’t want to have to fire the cannon again. That was meant for external aggressors like the Portuguese or the Germans, who threatened the colony from the nearby Msumbiji and Tanganyika, not defecating coolies and their local collaborators.

  Blacks and browns joining hands could be dangerous. He had seen it happen in South Africa, and he didn’t wish to have that replicated in East Africa. McDonald decided to place Babu under surveillance. It was then that he remembered where he had bumped into Babu previously­—he’d been on the shipwrecked vessel. McDonald knew where to find Nahodha, the ship’s captain.

  * * *

  Fatima remained bedridden, barely seeing Babu for more than a few minutes each day. She had no idea what was keeping him away, although she suspected he felt complicit in the calamity that had befallen her. She blamed him squarely for the loss of the use of her legs. She had heard the ship’s captain with her own two ears: Nahodha, a pious man of Allah, had cursed Babu and his family. Days later, she lost use of her legs. She would never walk again, and her new husband, the proper target of the curse, could barely stand still. Her initial anger was replaced by bitterness. She regretted having left home to join a man she now considered completely mad. She replayed such thoughts over and over, but always returned to the beginning—she had married a crazy man, and would have to bear the consequences. Her father had appeared hesitant about her accompanying her husband to the new land. It was her mother who’d been pushy, telling her to think of the Indian Ocean not as a barrier but a link to the new land and to new opportunities. She had encouraged her to travel. When they were ready, they would return, especially if they found prosperity while in Africa. A woman could belong anywhere, her mother had said. She could put down roots wherever the soil was fertile. Fatima had simply nodded and said nothing. Even at the tender age of sixteen, she knew, as her people said, acceding to something was not a burden, nor did it mean being bound to that decision.

  The morning after surviving the shipwreck, Fatima had been in a state—her eyes shut but ears wide open—when she heard voices and instantly recognized that of Nahodha next door. His voice was weak, but it was unmistakably him recalling their trouble at sea. Fatima instantly knew Nahodha was talking about Babu.

  “Yes, I recall the man. His head is full of water, that’s why his forehead is so pronounced,” Nahodha said.

  Fatima heard another man laugh. “The people here call such a man kichwa maji. I don’t know a lot of Swahili, but I do know kichwa maji. It means a head full of water. There are plenty of those around here.”

  “But he is trouble, I tell you,” Nahodha went on. “I believe our shipwreck stemmed from his misconduct. How does one mock a man in prayer unless one is the agent of ibilisi, the devil himself?”

  Fatima heard the other man laugh again, but this time the laughter did not last. “If he is looking for trouble, he has come to the right place,” he said. “The locals here have an expression: If you want to catch a man, you place a tail in his path. Once he steps on it, the cat will show him what she does best . . .”

  Fatima was very attentive now. None of those recuperating knew she was related to Babu, for he had spent his time on the deck throughout their sail. Nor did anyone know that she had recognized Babu to be the subject of discussion by Nahodha and the visitor. She had to warn Babu about the conspiracy against him. She would deal with him on her own terms—no one but she would seek revenge against Babu. Nahodha had cursed Babu, but Fatima was suffering the consequences. The stranger with his cat tricks would not get the better of her.

  * * *

  The sentry detailed to monitor Babu reported to McDonald that he had noticed almost no movement, accurately recording the few instances Babu stepped out for air or walked to the hedge to pass water. Twice, the sentry said, he noticed Babu emptying a tin gallon before returning inside the camp. “He appeared engrossed in thought the entire time,” the sentry said. “It’s as though something is troubling him.”

  McDonald shuddered. That probably meant Babu was planning some revolt against him. But he thought the man’s lack of movement was strange. He had expected Babu would be all over the place, building new alliances. One does not make trouble in the solitude of one’s own mind. “Do you think he suspects he is being watched?” McDonald asked.

  The sentry, keen to have the assignment called off, lied, “Maybe,” although he knew Babu hadn’t really displayed any such anxieties—he didn’t look over his shoulder or appear self-conscious. As a matter of fact, Babu appeared to be mumbling to himself. But the sentry wanted his isolation to end so that he could return to his regular spot under the mnazi, where Nyundo told his tall tales. Spending his days in treetops watching other people go about their business would soon become public knowledge, and the sentry would be ridiculed by those who knew him. They would say strange things were happening since wazungu had arrived—they had turned some in their midst into birds, perching on treetops eating figs all day.

  McDonald was puzzled. If Babu had discovered his surveillance, then they must be dealing with a more complex adversary than he had originally assumed. That could only mean one thing: that Babu probably had military training, as the instinct to cover one’s tracks does not come naturally, especially if the garrulous temperament that Nahodha had described, and what he had personally witnessed at the fort, were accurate. Stalling, so he had more time to figure out his next move, McDonald told the sentry without conviction: “Let’s watch him for one more day.”

  On the third day, the man espied Babu escorting Fatima to the fence to relieve herself. Initially, her feet swept the ground before Babu lifted her comfortably and deposited her near the hedge. She waited for a few moments as Babu retreated to a respectable distance. She crouched in a kneeling position and swiftly lifted her sari to reveal a smooth brown bum. She glanced at what she had deposited, then scooped earth in her palms and buried her waste, just like a cat. Babu walked aimlessly while keeping an eye in the general direction of the hedge. The spy watched Fatima lift a hand to wave at Babu, who returned and helped her back to the camp.

  McDonald was unable to disguise his joy at this new discovery. If Babu had a crippled
wife who kept him busy day and night, that was good fortune. Even his trainers at Sandhurst had a term for it: soft target. It meant his initial plan to administer a quick, sharp attack against his adversary would now be changed to a long-range, long-term strategy of annihilation. His visions of Babu taking care of his sick wife invoked the sour memories of Sally and his mind flashed back to that morning in South Africa when he had found her in bed with his black gardener. He would teach Babu a lesson. He suspected the hospital would be Babu’s next port of call and planned accordingly.

  * * *

  Fatima went to see Dr. Casebook over the next few weeks. Dr. Casebook dutifully administered bad medicine as McDonald had instructed. The intention was not to maim Fatima, only to slow down her recovery. As long as she was unwell, McDonald had decided, Babu would be fully absorbed in caring for her. Dr. Casebook told Fatima she would have to learn to live with her condition as the nerves in her legs had been dead for the week they were shipwrecked and could not be revived.

  Babu’s daily exchanges with Fatima were confined to her health status. How was she feeling, had she remembered to take the medication, did she feel like a massage? To these questions, Fatima responded with a simple yes or no, and theirs became a house of silence.

  This was part of Fatima’s strategy to keep Babu out of harm’s way. As long as he was with her, Nahodha and the mysterious man plotting against him would have little prospect of succeeding. She had told Babu she had nightmares day and night and begged him not to leave her alone. He spent the day attending to her, cooking for her, coaxing her to eat, shifting her from one corner to another, gingerly lifting her like delicate cargo. Once she was done eating, he applied herbs that had been offered by the two Swahili medicine men. One of the healers said it was pretty common for people to suffer cramps after crouching for long periods. They provided some herbal ointments that they believed would ease the cramps.