Dance of the Jakaranda

by Peter Kimani

  But the couple woke early the next morning to startling news from England. The girl’s father had died in his sleep. The princess was now the queen! Once again, fate had conspired to deny McDonald his rightful inheritance. As a gracious host, he bowed to the new queen and inquired: “What can I do for you, Your Majesty?”

  That’s not to say McDonald was left empty-handed. The news that he had hosted the royal couple during that dramatic transition of authority would ensure a steady trickle of important guests arriving on his doorstep wanting to sleep where the young girl had gone to bed as a princess and woken up a queen. Through fees charged for accommodations and the concierge services provided for next to nothing by African laborers, McDonald made a comfortable living without seeming to do so. When in a good cheer, he’d donate to a local school or a church, even to charities formed by white conservationists. But he kept the bulk of his money for himself, unsure how he’d use it and what would happen to his vast land once he was gone, perhaps with a sprinkle of ashes on his buttocks.

  McDonald’s revelation came in 1953, the year after the new queen’s visit, and like many aspects of his life—in which fate so often conspired to direct where he should go—it started as a call of duty. The colony was in a restive mood, so much of it placed under emergency laws. This meant all natives had to wear tags around their necks that announced their name and tribe, and special permits had to be secured for the Kikuyu, whom the colonial authorities had identified as supporting the insurgency. The emergency laws also meant the colonial police, comprising mainly Punjabi, Sikh, and British officers, had been ordered to shoot to kill any locals who stood in their way. Tens of thousands of locals were pushed out of their villages and placed in concentration camps for screening. Rajan’s friend Era’s father was one of them. A man torn from his family, subjected to hard labor for years, only because he had been suspected of aiding those fighting in the forest; the evidence of the man’s alleged complicity stemmed merely from his name and a perceived communal allegiance.

  Their animals were confiscated and villages razed. Overnight, villages that nestled the forests or rose gently over the rolling hills were crushed to smithereens by fighter jets that attested to the white man’s might.

  Nothing pained Reverend Turnbull more. God’s country was gone. And the aspects of cultural life that he built his ministry around had been disrupted. Men had been separated from their wives. Mothers had been torn away from their children. McDonald and Reverend Turnbull had never felt further apart. McDonald provided strategic and military support to the colonial police; Reverend Turnbull went to console the new widows and orphaned children. He was among the few Englishmen who entered and left Kikuyuland during those years of strife without being threatened or harmed. He still stepped out in his scarecrow attire, complete with an umbrella, calling on the locals to repent for their sins and turn to the Lord.

  Following the completion of the construction of the railway, Reverend Turnbull had dedicated his time to spreading the gospel, establishing missions in different townships over the next several decades. He considered himself the quintessential mustard seed that had found nurture in the most propitious of circumstances. He had set up churches all over the colony, literally following the railway line. He took particular pride in the fact that he had been there to watch the railway take shape, and in turn had helped shape the country. But he always went back to Nakuru, which he thought of as home and where he met regularly with his old friend McDonald—whom he considered family—to recall their shared past.

  Although the mother church considered him to be in retirement, Turnbull insisted he would preach to his grave because his faith came before all else. At the advanced age of nearly ninety-two—locals said his face was now paper-white—he hardly traveled. And when he did, it was only short distances that ensured he’d be back to base by nightfall.

  But this changed when Kiama kia Rukungu started its campaign to oust white farmers from the Rift Valley. Turnbull felt he needed to participate in fostering peace among the communities because he had been there since the formation of the colony. He personally knew almost all the parties involved in the political process, and he believed God’s voice should be allowed to prevail.

  Even at his advanced age, Turnbull retained his usual cheerfulness as he went about his business, ministering to women and children in villages because all men had fled to the forest to fight, or were detained at various camps by the colonial authorities. Occasionally, he was invited to the prison to administer final rites to the inmates about to face the noose. Wherever he went, Turnbull reminded that God existed for all human creeds, because there was only one God. All were children of God. And all had come short of His glory.

  But what really prompted Turnbull to visit the villages surrounding Nakuru was that he’d heard all the local preachers had been intimidated into submission. Almost all of them had received handwritten letters from the fighters in the forest warning that they would be punished for treason if they continued working for the white man. One preacher received a letter warning him that he had been exposed as a hyena pretending to lead his herd to the grazing fields, while all he really wanted to do was feast on them.

  One afternoon, while delivering a sermon mainly to women and children in an open-air camp, Turnbull received a hand-delivered letter from little boys who said they had found it by a tree near the church. It was written in Kikuyu and signed, The Leader of Kiama kia Rukungu.

  You came to our country and told us to close our eyes to pray. When we opened our eyes, our land was gone. The Bible in your hand had been replaced by a gun. Have pity on yourself and depart from our midst, for killing a man your age is like mocking God. Do not tempt us . . .

  Turnbull continued, undeterred. He was inwardly sympathetic to the African cause to liberate their country, for he had relatives in Ireland who had spent their lifetimes resisting the English rule and demanding their land back.

  Another warning was delivered a week later, this time containing a more ominous warning: We know what you are doing under the cover of darkness. We shall come for your head . . . This second letter was unsigned, and Turnbull thought no further about it. He simply crumpled the paper and hurled it into the fire with philosophical contemplation: Those intent on killing don’t go around talking about it. They do it. If they want me, they will find me.

  That day, Turnbull gave a moving sermon before a group of seven young women and two boys, elaborating on Jesus’s travails in the wilderness, which lasted a whole forty days and nights but presaged His redemption and everlasting life. To climax the sermon, Turnbull asked, as he always did, if there was anyone in the congregation who wanted to commit their life to Jesus. A young woman rose to her feet, followed by a second, then a third . . . until all seven female congregants were on their feet.

  The reverend was beside himself with happiness. He gave all of the women hearty hugs to receive them in Christ’s communion, he said, each hug lasting longer than the previous one. The assembled women then broke into a song that Turnbull joined with unalloyed joy:

  Mwathani wakwa njakaniria tawa

  Nyumitwo thutha ni nduma nene

  Mbere ciiruru ihana mahiga

  Kuria thu ciakwa injetereire . . .

  Lord light my way

  I’m pursued by impenetrable darkness

  Ahead lie shadows darker than the rocks

  Where my enemies lurk . . .

  Turnbull wore a big grin as he continued to receive the new converts, even as his thoughts wandered to that maiden ride on the train and the lie about Nakuru as his Nineveh mission upon which he founded his church. He embraced the next convert absentmindedly, distracted by his memories. The two remained locked in an embrace as the singing continued a bit longer, before abruptly ending. Turnbull had slumped to the ground, with blood oozing from his chest. The faithful wailed in flight, as Turnbull’s attacker, a man who had been disguised as a woman, brandished his weapon and chanted: “Mzungu arudi kwao, Mwafrika apate
uhuru.”

  Turnbull’s wide-brimmed hat was still on his head, somewhat tilted as though to shield him from the sun, his trousers still squeezed in his socks. Even in that state, the reverend seemed full of life, his eyes staring intently at the blue sky. But for the single fly that buzzed around his open mouth, lured by the dried blood from his chest, one would have thought he was asleep.

  * * *

  When McDonald received the news, the twitch of his mustache—which like a dormant volcano had laid undisturbed for years—resurged with such violence he feared he would lose it. McDonald spent the whole day considering the best ways to avenge Reverend Turnbull’s death. A note stashed in his pocket pointed an accusing finger at the Kiama kia Rukungu:

  You came with the gun and the Bible, the note charged, now you reap what you sowed . . .

  Years earlier, McDonald had declined to join the war against the insurgents, partly because he was still traumatized by his experiences in Mombasa. In any case, he was officially retired; it was up to the colony to defend its citizens. Only now he had a personal stake in the matter. He had lost a good friend and he could not just sit there and grieve. He had laid the base for the new colony, each aspect of its life compartmentalized like the train coaches. Segregation was applied in deciding where one could live, as well as how much one could earn and for what kind of work. Some white farmers had started allowing black workers to stay on their farms in the hope that they could convince their black brothers to leave the places alone when they came calling. But the black workers were not allowed to keep animals on their masters’ farms, lest they imported diseases into the white paradise.

  McDonald’s household had more stringent regulations. Nobody was allowed to stay overnight. All his domestic workers came and went. He felt more comfortable living with wild animals. The only staff that stayed on were those running the transport service that picked up guests from the train station, and the housekeeper who ensured clean linen was available and water ran in the taps. It was on that day that McDonald thought through the entire colonial enterprise and came to a sudden recognition that the British Empire that he and other settlers had been assured would last a lifetime, the empire upon which the sun would never set, was slowly plunging into darkness. The colonial enterprise was not sustainable. The train brought in soldiers and missionaries and took away bales of cotton and bags of cereals. The soldiers and missionaries spent their days persuading the locals to toil hard through the threat of violence and the hope of redemption.

  But these were hardly sensible choices for people who had nothing to eat. The British had taken the people’s land, of which McDonald had kept a thousand acres. What had been previously communal sources of fresh water and fish was now in private hands, and trespassers were threatened with persecution. On top of that, McDonald had fashioned his own lodge as a private ranch for wild animals and hunting was prohibited. So communities that had for centuries depended on the land to feed and clothe themselves could neither own the land nor what it could produce, nor even tread on its surface. Even locals’ movement was confined to where a passbook, the kipande, issued by other white men, determined where one could venture and work. The vast majority of the population had nothing to lose, other than their chains.

  “I see darkness everywhere,” McDonald mumbled to himself on that day of reflection. What had his life been about? What had he achieved after ninety years on the planet? And once again, Babu the Indian technician began seeping in and out of his consciousness. McDonald remembered that it was Reverend Turnbull who took in the child that the Indian had been suspected of siring sixty years earlier. As McDonald went to the window and looked out, what he saw in his mind was the misty morning he first arrived in Nakuru and the conversation that he’d had with Reverend Turnbull. Did it matter, the reverend had asked, the color or creed of the illegitimate child? He had declared, “I’m now the girl’s father. I will raise her like my own.” Turnbull had doted on the child as he watched her grow and blossom into girlhood. And McDonald had marveled at the girl’s development as she matured into womanhood.

  With the reverend’s words ringing in his mind, McDonald knew the only way to honor the memory of his departed friend would be through fostering better race relations and promoting tolerance. In this instance, he knew what would happen to the land bequeathed to him by the Queen of England in place of the knighthood that never was. He would build on it, using the money he’d accumulated over the years, a school named after his friend. The few conditions he would impose would include strict anonymity of the donor, as well as a fusion of the Christian principles that Reverend Turnbull had lived for with a slight emphasis on sportsmanship and physical fitness, the latter an offshoot of the military discipline that had shaped McDonald’s life.

  The school, named CMS Nakuru, for the religious order that had sponsored Reverend Turnbull’s trip to East Africa, was completed mere months after the preacher’s death and quickly established itself as a multiracial, nonreligious institution. Before long it had satellite campuses across the colony, including in Ndundori. Its reputation caught Babu’s attention and inspired his decision to send Rajan there to work as a volunteer. His other motivation was to ensure Rajan spent time with the Karims so he’d meet Leila, to whom he was betrothed.

  19

  The fall of the house that McDonald built was as spectacular as its rise; it did not go down without drama, or without spawning new legends to add to what had been in circulation for many decades. Many village folks who heard the news for the first time interrupted the speaker and instructed: “Can you repeat what you have just said?” And when the news was repeated, they interjected, “Atia atia? So, it’s true . . .” A majority refused to believe the news and opted to walk to the Jakaranda to see the ruins for themselves or asked those traveling in that direction to detour there and confirm the story.

  Travelers alighting from the train paused on the stairway, turning to their fellow passengers to ask: “Have we not arrived in Nakuru?” To which the reply would be that he, too, thought they had reached their destination, although the town looked remarkably different from the way he remembered it. Perhaps the township had moved a little farther? he might speculate. So the travelers stayed on the train, convinced they hadn’t arrived, only to hail the train master to stop again when they started moving out of the station. It took them awhile to figure out why Nakuru looked so different; the edifice that had defined the township for generations had been erased from the face of the earth. And as Nakuru dwellers liked to add, just like that. Dissolved like grains of sugar in a cup of tea. But how could that happen? many wondered, as news of the Jakaranda’s destruction spread like a bushfire. How could the place that gave Nakuru life be deprived of its own life? And how could Nakuru survive if all it had was drawn from the Jakaranda?

  The ruins of the establishment were still smoldering the next morning as residents from different parts of Nakuru and adjoining villages arrived to witness for themselves what had befallen their town’s most famous landmark. The building’s stone base still stood but the roof had been blown away, the rafters that once held it having caved in, the struts dark and sooty and fragile. People stood in groups whispering, wondering who could have been behind the arson. Yarns of all manner were spun about what could have happened. By now, it had been established that McDonald had been somewhat involved in the skirmishes that led to the torching of the house. It was whispered that Kiama kia Rukungu adherents had arrived at his doorstep and threatened to reduce him to dust, but McDonald’s exact role in the incident remained unclear.

  Religious folks dismissed those yarns and claimed the destruction was a natural disaster. They said God had unleashed an earthquake that shook the building to its core, then sent down a flash of lightning to torch the ruins. That no one perished in the accident, they said, was proof that this was God’s warning to the world that the fire next time would be more devastating if people did not repent and turn to Him.

  So, as different versio
ns of what could have transpired started making their rounds, as was typical of Nakuru, McDonald’s mythology grew larger than life. He always had a certain mystique, older men whispered, recalling McDonald’s Years of Solitude in that very house that had been razed. Not to be left out, Gathenji the butcher reported that the marauding gang had arrived at the establishment earlier but were chased away by the customers. Yet very few who’d been at the Jakaranda added their voices to the debate; most were too embarrassed for not doing anything at all, and for even pointing the attackers to where McDonald lived. Perhaps they, too, were deluded about McDonald’s reputed prowess, and so had not taken the threat against him too seriously.

  So let’s end the speculation here and now and record the events as they happened. It is true McDonald was confronted by the dancing youths who invaded his farm, and whose paraphernalia suggested they were members of Kiama kia Rukungu. But looks can be misleading and McDonald had lived long enough to know that. He was somewhat hypnotized by a drummer who looked eerily reminiscent of a drummer he had encountered many, many years before in Mombasa, but whose name he couldn’t quite remember. There was something familiar about the tilt of his head, even the way he thundered the drum with his hands.

  McDonald tried to shake off the thought but he couldn’t. At the ripe age of nearly ninety-two, he enjoyed great health, although his mind occasionally melded memories of the past with the present, so any exploration of the present was a laborious reflection of the past as well. His train of thought, as it were, started and ended with the literal train that he had come to build.