The Present Moment

by Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wairimu resumed her memories.

  ‘There was another strike in Kisumu in 1947. It didn’t amount to much, and I wasn’t inspired to spend more hard-earned shillings going off to see more water at the other end of Kenya. In any case those days we believed you Luo people ate only fish, and that would not have suited me at all. But it was a sign that things were happening. In July the Colonial Secretary from England – Creech-Jones, that was: they change them faster than rika leaders – came to Nyeri and told us he had been sent by the king to listen to our complaints: he did not stay around long enough to do much listening, but we hoped that our leaders had explained all the points.

  ‘I went because I hated to miss anything new, not because I wanted to draw attention to myself. But I was over forty then, though not worn down as my mother had seemed at that age. I could read well and write a little. I knew a lot of Swahili, had been to Nairobi a number of times, had been employed for more than twenty-five years. Very cautiously the foreman approached me, and in 1949 I became a full member of the chama – no need to go into that – and a recruiter. I was not, in those sour days, thinking about the rainbow and the golden haze. But, as they say, one thing leads to another.

  ‘I needed a break occasionally between tickets, since there was not much for me to go home for. I’d been to Nairobi once in the late thirties and found it spread out into sets of labour lines: it was hard to keep the excitement of the centre in the landhies and quarters without much money or glamour about them. There were hardly any horse- or bullock-carts left, though someone had an idea to get rickshaws going again in competition with motor traffic. It didn’t last long. There seemed fewer Somalis – in fact, of course, there were more inland Africans, about half of them Kikuyu and a quarter Kavirondo. There were nearly ten men to each woman, though some of the workers’ wives came for part of each year, after harvest. And though I had once thought myself so sophisticated, I was at a loss now among these women, not knowing where to cross the crowded street or how to arrange my hair in the neat new patterns. I went again on my way back from Mombasa, this time studying carefully the cut of dresses and the suitable occasions for wearing shoes. In 1950, when the city was having its Golden Jubilee, I thought I would go again. Our top leaders were keeping away: ordinary people were afraid that the whole of Kiambu would be swallowed up inside the city boundary, and so they boycotted the celebrations. But I was only an outsider, after all. What harm could there be if I saw the sights and reported back to my local cell?

  ‘Well, I have never seen London, of course, but I am sure Nairobi in those days must have looked like London. There was a big platform outside the Town Hall for the ceremonies and all kinds of police about and soldiers in their smartest uniforms, some of them on horses; there were banners in the streets, and everything remarkably clean. Even in the locations there was some effort to tidy things up, and at Pumwani there was the Royal Guard Simba Scotch led by Edi bin Songoro – that was one beni you missed, Sophia.

  ‘The African Advisory Council that was introduced to the Duke of Gloucester included two women – that made me feel good, though I wondered how much advice they had a chance to give. There was a big pageant with people acting out different scenes from Kenya’s history as the trailers moved round: most of it was done by Europeans but we had our part in it too. The trade union people had said we ought to stay away, and a lot of people wore their black armbands in protest, but it was difficult for a lot of us to resist a show. Remember that we didn’t have any TV in those days and very few people could afford cinemas or outings. Some of our leaders made sure they would not be in Nairobi on Charter Day, but for working men that was not a realistic choice.

  ‘I recognised Harry Thuku again – middle-aged then, a good deal heavier, but as you get older yourself you learn to make allowances for change. He was sitting up on a platform talking to the PCs and the DCs, still a fine figure of a man and, after all, this was one of the things we wanted from him – only one, but still something – to claim familiarity on our behalf. I wondered what had happened to Tairara and the rest – Tairara had got his sentence reduced in 1922, though they never forgave the white lawyer for taking his case on. So I pushed as close as I could in the crowd and began to sing quietly Kanyegenuri. But Thuku did not seem to hear me – after all, he was not a young man any more (people were still teasing him about getting married at such an age) and there was a lot of noise going on. I realised then that, although he must have known of Nyanjiru’s death, he might not even have known the song, since he had been away in detention all the years it was popular. In any case my loyalty now was to the new kiama in which he would have no part.

  ‘I had meant to go home soon after Charter Day, but I was staying with an old friend in Shauri Moyo and she advised me to stay on a bit. We did not talk of the oathing, for she was from Kiambu, and our organisations kept their separate ways, but she wished me to talk to some of the young people about circumcision and our old ways. She also thought I should gather more news to take home to Nyeri with me.

  ‘Perhaps she knew about the big meeting that would be held in Kaloleni Hall in April, where the Africans and Asians got together. They were supposed to be discussing the new policies proposed for Tanganyika, but they dealt with labour problems and freedom as well. Twenty thousand people attended, and the Kenya African Union and the East African Indian National Congress were given a mandate to act together on the resolutions.

  ‘That was great, but it was not, of course, going to be all. Two African councillors had been threatened with arms because they had assented to the Charter celebrations. The United African Traders’ Association had also passed resolutions very critical of the City Council. May Day was coming up – you see by then even I was thinking about dates and months rather than seasons and tickets – and the East African Trades Union Congress was not allowed to have a procession. So instead they had a meeting at the Desai Memorial Hall, the one beside the Fire Station. A lot of our freedom was shaped there. You may not even know how strange it seemed then – Asian workmen going on foot to Kaloleni, Africans in suits and ties sitting on a platform in a Hindu hall.

  ‘They made a lot of demands in that meeting, and the discussion was pretty hot. So in the middle of the month Makhan Singh and Fred Kubai were arrested on a technical charge about the registration of the organisation. Almost immediately the general strike started. The organisers called in the name of the TUC for five things which they gave as reasons for the strike. The first demand was for the release of Makhan Singh, Kubai and Kibachia. The second was a minimum monthly wage of one hundred shillings. Then there were some detailed points affecting taxi drivers and a call for the abolition of secret night arrests. But fifth – lastly and largest and hardest to believe – freedom for all workers and for all Africans in East Africa. That was 1950, remember! Since then we have bargained for a lot of things – constitutions, votes, Africanisation, maternity leave, equal pay – but freedom for every worker? Where does that happen? We used to say, “Gūtirī wīathī, no wathīkanīrī” – there is no independence, only inter-dependence.

  ‘Strikers were asked to remain in the Shauri Moyo area. That was not so easy, since many lived and worked far from there. It also brought the strongest force of police to Shauri Moyo and Pumwani: some stones were thrown and there were baton charges. Residents were warned that they had better stay indoors during the hours of darkness. Still, up to five thousand men drifted around the area, and many more than that answered the call to strike.

  ‘I don’t say – it would be absurd to say – that every one of those thousands knew exactly what was going on. A few were there because they had been threatened by fellow-workers, more than a few returned to work because they had been threatened by employers with dismissal or wage cuts, or enticed by offers of cash which they desperately needed. But every striker knew that he needed and, comparing with rates paid to non-African workers, undoubtedly deserved a hundred shillings a month. Ever
y striker knew that some people who had tried to defend his interests had been put to silence by a government which had quite other interests to defend. Every striker knew that India had got freedom and Gold Coast was demanding freedom and so freedom, whatever it meant, was not an impossible thing to ask for.

  ‘Eight whole days, sisters, the strike went on, even without the trade union leaders to direct it. Convicts were used by the city authorities to empty the dustbins and the lavatory buckets. European ladies served meals in hotels. Essential services were maintained by law. But at Shauri Moyo the ceremonial fire was kept going day and night, and from the house we watched people leaping and dancing round it and piling on branches to keep the flames going. On the night of the ninth day the fire burned itself out. Enough was enough, it seemed to signify. We had not freed those three people – the arguments were still going on, but Singh would start his long detention soon and Kubai escape the net for another two years. We had not got our hundred shillings. We had not got freedom. But we had started a fire.

  ‘The strike spread to Limuru, the Bata factory and other places but the police charges there were very severe and we dreaded hearing about them. Perhaps that was what broke the people’s spirit in the end. Then there was the tribal feeling, which the government had always tried to play upon. Some of the pickets were very hard on Luo house servants, threatening to shave people’s heads and that kind of thing. Well, I suppose they ought to have refused to work, but of course it was not their land that was endangered by the extension of the city, and everybody ought to know how hard it is for a house servant to strike. He comes face to face with his employer more than a worker in a farm or a factory and he is not part of a big team. If one cook risks losing his job, it doesn’t make conditions any better for the cook next door. But because some Luos were intimidated, others enrolled as special constables and the government even thanked the Luo Union for getting these volunteers. To me that was a very sad thing and I expect the enemies of the workers made the most of it. In 1922, when there were so few town workers, they cooperated among themselves. In Mombasa Chege had organised a group in which there were perhaps more Luo than any other inland people. But Chege had been ‘deported’ as though he were an alien, and now we were looking too much inwards.

  ‘I went back to Nyeri with my eyes and throat still smarting from the tear gas. The first time is the most frightening. Now our sons go to football on a Sunday afternoon without thinking anything of it. I reported what I had seen, but my foreman and the others told me now to stop moving on my own. I was to pass messages and sometimes hide travellers right where I was in the coffee, not to draw attention to myself. My employer already knew me as someone who liked to travel, so now that it seemed clear Kikuyu movements would be more strictly controlled as time went on, I should keep those excuses to use in times of necessity. The words “Mau Mau” were now being frequently seen in the newspapers. At the same time the fear of the “savage African” had just come strongly upon a lot of government people because of the armed clash which had led to several deaths in Baringo over a “breakaway religion”. It was a pity, perhaps, that this had to happen while the workers were trying to put their case so reasonably in Nairobi. The same fires were bubbling below ground, but I’ve no particular fancy for hot steam gushing out myself. I should be all for putting a machine in the middle that you can control by pressing a switch. But they say a child who has never been burned doesn’t fear the fire.

  ‘And in spite of being increasingly in the news, we did not seem to be very cautious. Even after a lot of fires had been set in Nyeri town at the beginning of 1952, meetings were being called to oath as many as five hundred people at a time, and there were twenty-five thousand at a mass rally in July. But me, I was very careful. I never missed church – in any case, I enjoyed going to church. I was never late for work, never turned in bad berries: I cut out all the newspaper pictures of the new queen and pasted them on the wall. Because of my age, I was able to instruct the women in the traditional age-group greetings that were being revived and, in spite of never being properly married myself, to help them set up circumcision operations for the girls.

  ‘I was sorry for some of them. They did not know what it was all about and were not going to get the public approval we had had to help us bear the pain. Some also were sewn up too tight – the old skills had grown rusty. Well, some of them have got their two-car households and refrigerators now, and those who need to can deliver in the hospital. That is the way it goes. There is a price for belonging to any age-group.

  ‘I lost a lot of good friends in those years – a few in the fighting, others struggling to get their babies born in the camps, some starved out of their homes to trek to distant places. My family survived: it would not do to ask one another how or why. It was Njoki in the convent I was most worried about, since she would find it impossible either to resist or to comprehend attack from either side, but her virgin, after all, is powerful. The sisters were not harmed, and Njoki had her jubilee before she died comfortably in the hospital where she had worked, with all her beads and crucifix about her. One let no tears be seen for those emergency losses. Others I lost respect for, gabbling the solemn oath only to save their skins, or making use of it to aggrandise themselves. But many stood firm, through fire, suspicion, deep double meanings and a web of trust.

  ‘At last we got our wish, freedom, a broadening of the ways much as you all have seen. But the same Master stayed on the coffee. Well, he had also borne much, and Kenyatta had invited them to continue. Until he grew old and wanted to retire, sought a purchaser, a Kikuyu, and we rejoiced. But not for long. We found ourselves turned away, new clansmen brought in: they said we were too political, bargaining, counting hours. Fighting for land and freedom we had not grudged the hours, or money either. But so it was. At seventy one does not expect consideration.

  ‘I came to Nairobi, following my rainbow, swallowing the years of risk and caution, the sweat that trickled when another woman bled from the lashes, the cough that terrified when there was most need of silence, the curfew darkness where each cry for help might be a trap. I came admiring the broad pavements where black girls walked in expensive frocks, the pulsing music in our languages, our parliament, our conference centre, our leaders’ statues, our airline and our fleets of buses. Until the sun darkened one day and on the pavements beside the text cards and the cheap mirrors people put forth the pictures of another hero, saved from the hyenas but laid to rest fingerless at Gilgil. I had my little tea kiosk. I watched, for I had practice in watching, but the cough racked me and the kettles grew heavy to lift. Another hero less. I dragged myself up the hill to see, face to face, Jomo Kenyatta lie in state. I saw the fire flaring in the mausoleum for a modern man who had once saved his infant brother, Muigai, from dying alone in the wailing forest. I saw his daughter Wambui in her mayoral robes. And one day I saw my little kiosk kicked to pieces by uniformed men doing their duty to build the nation.

  ‘Rather than weep, I coughed myself into collapse. That was five years ago. They brought me here. Didn’t I tell you I was born lucky? My fairy-tale started with a hero on the forest path. It ends where the old queens live happily ever after, and sometimes dance till their slippers are worn out. Priscilla, you never learned this properly. But Bessie, I can teach you the words about the chief of the girls who lived in the coffee:

  Filipu aromakoguo

  Nio matwarithirie munene wa Nyacing’ a

  Nyacing ’a ituire Kahawa-ini.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Nekesa dreamed of Kampala. It was all very well for Rahel to say she only dreamed significant messages. Perhaps when she was younger the distinction between dream and reality had been clearer to her – or perhaps she had more command of her thoughts than other people. Those black women who stood up to their menfolk and phrased themselves in terse little syllables – ok, ol, mit, mak, pok, poth, sometimes it made her laugh – were possibly better organised than those of the fluent, long-drawn sentences. Neke
sa did not count herself one of these. She understood Lubukusu and some of the related dialects that made up Ololuyia, but it had never been a major language of her life and never since early childhood had she visited the home village or shared in the digging of those little overcrowded plots. The language meant to her everlasting rows in the railway quarters where they lived as time and time again her father came home to find no food in the house, her mother either tipsy or still out with one of her fancy men, the children dirty and quarrelling. She was ten and her brother a bit less when they left with their mother for Dundora, beside the quarry. Her father kept the younger children and brought another wife to care for them, but these two, he said, had learned evil ways already and were too much for a decent woman to cope with. That much she had understood in the dialect called of ‘home’. But it helped her, later, to get a grasp of Luganda with its long complex greetings and its combination of grunts and hisses.

  In her dream she was trudging up one of the long, paved hills of Kampala – she did not know which – with a bunch of bananas balanced on her head, and after a few yards the bananas would fall off and she would be at the bottom again, beginning the long climb. But when she awoke it was to recapture her first excitement at the place and her surprise to find the villages, with their banana groves, tucked between the hills, the separateness of people’s lives, as though all the suburbs and labour lines and bazaars and colleges and ministries and parks that made up Nairobi were chopped up into little pieces and scattered up and down the slopes like a nursery school puzzle. She remembered the ladies in their splendid busutis patronising the expensive shops (which African women seldom yet entered in Nairobi, though she did not have much occasion to go to town and see). In contrast she was wearing the very short skirts which were the badge of availability in Kampala, long before miniskirts came in for everybody and swamped the distinction. She thought she knew about men, too, from the earliest years – what else could she learn about out there beside the quarry with no schooling, no land and no peace ever in the house? – but Kampala, that, as the saying goes, was something else again. The young girls who had the energy for it could keep busy throughout the twenty-four hours, and no waste of time on preliminaries either – these men had to get back to the office or drive their buses another stage. She was glad to be saved from it but it was no good wishing one had missed it.