All the people present assume that I am excited because of my next school; only my younger brother knows what I am really feeling. For the first time in my life I am going to board a passenger train. I recall that time when I was not able to board a train to Elburgon. I recall how my brother, who took the train then, would later hint at the wonders of the train ride as a way of letting me know that he had one up on me. He knew that I was envious of his achievement. But he does not know that I have also been envious of John and Joan, the fictional schoolkids who lived in Oxford but went to school in Reading by train. Now my time has come. Now I am doing the same thing. A train to school. A boarding school. Alliance High School, Kikuyu. Twelve miles away, but it is as if I’m about to ride a train to paradise. This one is even more special. It will carry my dreams in a time of war.
At long last the train arrives. We walk toward the coaches that are not marked for Europeans only or Asians only. Third class is not even dignified by “Africans only.” Wanjai and Liz and others enter and as they do they show a piece of paper to a European railway official. It is now my turn. The official stops me. Pass? What pass? He demands to see a pass that allows me to move from Limuru to Kikuyu, only twelve miles away. It is a new law under the state of emergency. No member of the Gĩkũyũ, Embu, and Meru community can board the train without a government-issued pass. But nothing of the sort was mentioned on any of the information sheets in the package from the school. Interventions by Wanjai and Liz Nyambura are to no avail. The only assurance Wanjai can give is that he will tell the school about the mishap. But his words don’t touch me; they can’t heal the wound in my heart. By now there is a commotion around me, different people offering different opinions.
I stand there on the platform with my luggage and watch the train move away with my dreams but without me, with my future but without me, till it disappears. I shed tears. I don’t want to, I am a man, I am not supposed to cry, but I cannot help it. The white military officer who had floored me with blows could not make me cry; but this white officer, a railway official, who has denied me a ride in the train has done it. Those who would have commiserated with me are themselves in need of commiseration. I don’t know how my mother will receive this, for mine was also her dream.
And then out of nowhere an African assistant station master arrives on the scene. Somebody must have gone to appeal to him. His name, I will learn, is Chris Kahara. Years later, after independence, he will become mayor of the City of Nairobi. But just now he is simply an assistant station master in his official white uniform, a white safari jacket over white trousers. He tells me not to cry; he will do his best to ensure that I get to Kikuyu. Only I will probably miss the bus to school. But I could run through the Ondiri marshes to my dreams. Before he has finished talking, along comes a goods train. It is not the smooth-looking passenger train I had hoped for, but I follow him to the last car. He has made arrangements. I get into the car. I am surrounded by workmen’s tools and clothes. I can smell their sweat but it does not matter. The car has no windows so I don’t see the landscape. The journey feels like one of a thousand miles. I am numb with fear that something will happen to stop me from catching up to my dreams.
At last I arrive at Kikuyu station. Like Limuru, it was opened in 1899. Somebody opens the back doors for me, behaves as if he is simply checking the tools, mumbles something like “It is here,” and I jump out, with my box. The man smiles, closes the door, and walks away.
I stand there at the station platform and watch the goods train go by, this time with relief and gratitude. I look around and see some shops. I take my box and drag it toward them. I cannot believe that this is the real Kikuyu Township. It consists of two rows of Indian shops very much like those at Limuru, but far fewer. But I am not interested in the Indian traders behind the counters or the African shoppers. I may have overcome one obstacle, but I have another to worry about.
The information sheet that I had received stated that a school bus would meet students at the station. I am late. The bus must have come and gone without me. I have no idea about the distance to and location of the school. I approach a stranger who looks askance at me and then points to a road, mumbling something about going past the Ondiri marshes, and walks away. I will have to wade through the Ondiri marshes the way I used to do in Manguo, except that then I carried nothing heavier than a bird’s egg or a bundle of wet clothes. Now I have a box with my belongings. And then I recall the story of Ondiri that I had read in Mwendwa nĩ Irĩ and Ngandi’s stories about people disappearing in the bog never to be seen again. Was this the same Ondiri? No, I am not going to walk through the Ondiri bog, no matter what. I will stick to the road.
I am about to start walking toward the road pointed out to me by the stranger when the school bus comes for others on the Mombasa train, which also arrives at that moment. I walk toward it. The teacher, who I learn later is the acting principal, Mr. James Stephen Smith, checks my name on his list and tells me to enter, as the other students do the same.
It is only after I enter the bus and sit down that I let out a sigh of relief and dare to look ahead. A new world. Another journey. A few minutes later, at a junction off the Kikuyu road, I see a billboard with banner letters so personal that I think it must have been for me alone. WELCOME TO ALLIANCE HIGH SCHOOL. I hear my mother’s voice: Is it the best you can do? I say to her with all my heart, Yes, Mother, because I also know what she really is asking for is my renewal of our pact to have dreams even in a time of war.
Irvine, California
February 12, 2009
Limuru Station
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Njeri wa Ngũgĩ, who suggested this; Gloria Loomis, who told me it cannot wait; Kĩmunya, my general assistant in Kenya; Kenneth Mbũgua, who provided pictures and information about our school days; Charity W. Mwangi, who gave information on Kĩambaa and Banana Hills; Neera Kapila for information on railroad stations and the picture of the Indian family; and, as always, my assistant Barbara Caldwell, for library and Internet research and editorial work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has taught at Amherst College, Yale University, and New York University. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Petals of Blood, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977, and Wizard of the Crow, which won the California Book Award Gold Medal for Fiction in 2007. He lives in Irvine, California.
Copyright © 2010 by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, [date]
Dreams in a time of war : a childhood memoir / Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37895-8
1. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, [date]—Childhood and youth. 2. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, [date]—Family. 3. Authors, Kenyan—20th century—Biography. 4. Kikuyu (African people)—Biography. 5. Kenya—History—1895–1963—Biography. 6. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, Kenyan. 7. World War, 1939–1945—Kenya. 8. Kenya—History—Mau Mau Emergency, 1952–1960—Personal narratives, Kenyan. 9. Kenya—Colonial influence. 10. Kenya—Social conditions—20th century. I. Title.
PR9381.9.N45Z469 2010 828′.91409—dc22 [B] 2009034107
www.pantheonbooks.com
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