Red Strangers

by Elspeth Huxley

  On the Mau news came in snatches, like bursts of distant music on a gust of wind. They heard that Benson Makuna and his Association were urging all fathers of girls to refuse the missionaries’ oath, but to take another, no less solemn, pledging themselves to have their daughters circumcised in the fullest and most thorough way. This oath was very sacred, and was taken secretly; the Itwika snake was somehow involved. All those whose daughters attended mission schools were taking their girls away. Young men were roaming the country in small bands learning the steps of a dance called the mambeleo, and singing the words of a new and more than usually obscene song. A big circumcision ceremony for girls was being planned and a special dance for the girl candidates, the musirigo, had been invented.

  Then came news that the Serkali had forbidden both the new dances and was fining all those who were heard singing the songs. Muthengi and the other chiefs had also forbidden these dances; they were sending their njamas to stop performances. In spite of this, the words were being sung everywhere: in the shambas, and on European farms; in Nairobi beer-halls, by men walking along the roads, by groups of youths gathered in front of the Serkali’s offices. The verses were full of wit, and provoked keen enjoyment and laughter.

  Both the song and the dance intrigued Karanja and he resolved to learn them in full. He obtained leave from Marafu and went by train to Kijabe, to the mission where he had thrown away his charms. Here he found his friend Karioki, now released from prison. Somehow Karioki had acquired wealth, for he was living near the mission with a young wife. He had been baptised as a Christian, he told Karanja, and his name was now Jehoshophat. He was employed by Benson Makuna, whose Association had become so powerful that it was feared by all Europeans, by the Serkali, and even by King George.

  Jehoshophat was a very busy man. Every day he addressed meetings and persuaded elders to take the oath to circumcise their daughters. All the young men of the district were dancing the mambeleo and singing the forbidden song. Many of the boys had been taken away from the mission and classes had dwindled to a quarter of their normal size.

  Among those who had stayed, Karanja found his young brother Kaleo. The boy had used the money given him for clothes to travel by train to Kijabe, where he had heard there was a school. When the European missionaries learnt that Kaleo’s brother had arrived at Kijabe, the grey-haired woman spoke to Karanja and asked for three shillings in fees.

  This woman had aroused the anger of Jehoshophat and his colleagues, for she was in charge of the girls who lived at the school. All those fathers who had taken the secret oath had sent young men to fetch away their daughters; but this woman had refused to let them go.

  The fathers were so angry at this that they went before the D.C.

  “This European woman has stolen our daughters,” they said. “She is keeping them in captivity at the mission and will not allow us, their fathers, to fetch them home. Is such blatant theft allowed by the Serkali, under the law?”

  The D.C. replied: “Certainly such a thing is not allowed. No one may steal another’s child, nor keep another person in captivity against his will. But nor may a father force his daughter to submit to a public ceremony of mutilation if she does not desire it. A meeting shall be held, and the daughters themselves shall decide.”

  The old men grew still angrier and said: “What sort of a law is this, that upholds a disobedient girl against her father, to whom she rightfully belongs?”

  3

  THE fathers sat in sullen silence outside the mission school and the European woman brought their daughters out to stand before them. They regretted now that they had ever sent the girls to school, even though the marriage price would be twice or three times that of an uneducated girl. They were disturbed to see that their daughters had thrown away their aprons. Each wore instead a cloth dress covering her breasts but giving, it seemed, no real protection elsewhere.

  The European woman stood up, her face half hidden by a big hat and her eyes screened by glass so that no one could know what was in her mind. She was very thin and her figure was not that of a woman at all. She addressed the girls in Kikuyu, saying:

  “Your fathers have come to take you away to be circumcised, and you must decide whether or no you wish to go. There are more important reasons than the pain and the injury why you should refuse to submit. I have explained to you that this custom is cruel, and therefore against the wishes of God. Moreover, our bodies were made after the image of God and it is a crime to mutilate them wilfully in a way which God did not intend. Therefore you should refuse to accompany your fathers, who are like men blind and deaf and unable to understand how evil is the thing they wish to do.”

  The fathers murmured angrily during this discourse, and at the end one or two lost their tempers and spoke in loud voices to the European. One even threatened her with his staff, although he was prevented by others from striking. Several men tried to speak at once and there was much confusion. “What right have you, a woman, to tell our daughters that the customs of our people are cruel and evil ?” they shouted. “How can you say to elders that they are deaf and blind?”

  At last one man’s voice gained ascendancy over the rest, and he said to the girls :

  “Do not listen to this woman; her words are part of a plot to destroy the Kikuyu people. Do you not know that the Europeans have stolen much of our land, and now they are trying to make all Kikuyu women barren so that they can seize what remains ? Circumcision is a very old custom of our people; it has existed since the world began. By it your fertility will be ensured ; if you forgo it you will be unable to conceive and no man will want to marry you. What right has this woman to tell you which of our ancient customs is bad ? Do not be deceived; leave her and return to your fathers, where you may learn to dance the musirigo and be received properly into your own clan.”

  A few girls left the group and went over to their fathers, saying : “We are tired of European ways. Here we are not allowed to dance with young men, and always we sleep alone as if we were covered with sores. This was not how our mothers behaved when they were girls.”

  The majority, however, dared not speak to their fathers, nor look at them. They turned their heads away and wiggled their shoulders, but their feet did not move.

  “Why do you not answer, you disobedient girls !” their fathers exclaimed. “Have the Europeans made you dumb ?”

  Still the girls made no reply, until one murmured : “We do not want to come.” Others, emboldened, echoed: “We wish to stay here at the mission; we do not want to be circumcised.”

  At this the fathers rose angrily and left in a body, striking their staffs on the ground as they walked and muttering like a thunder-cloud gathering for the storm. This open defiance from their own daughters was more than they could stand. Several cried angrily: “The European woman has bewitched our daughters!” and others added: “Yes, and stolen them from us like thieves!”

  “The Serkali will not help us,” another said. “How, then, can we get back our daughters ?”

  No one could think of a plan, and at last an old man said: “Let us ask Jehoshophat, the friend of Benson Makuna, who understands the duplicity of Europeans; perhaps he will know.”

  4

  THAT night a number of the fathers gathered in the hut where Jehoshophat was staying, close to the mission. Karanja was also there, and several educated men. Among them he recognised the hospital dresser who had made him throw away his charms.

  These young men listened to the elders’ indignation, and Jehoshophat said:

  “This is indeed an outrage, one that all Kikuyu must join together to resist! Shall this European woman be allowed to break our ancient customs like a calabash broken with a stone ? Are we women, always to do what others tell us ? I have a plan which will teach the Europeans not to interfere. Are you ready to join in this, and to do what I say ?”

  The young men shouted agreement; but the hospital dresser said:

  “What sort of words are these from you, Jehoshopha
t ? Have you not been baptised as a Christian?”

  “Certainly I am a Christian,” Jehoshophat affirmed.

  “Then why do you talk of the old customs as if you were an elder?” the dresser asked. “These elders here are not Christians; they know only the old customs, which they want to keep. But you follow the new customs taught by Europeans. Is it an old custom to wear trousers, and shoes, and hats ? Is it an old custom to read books, or to eat chickens, or to smoke cigarettes ? Yet all these things you do. And which of the customs do you keep ? Are your ear-lobes long and full of ornaments ? Is your body covered with ochre and fat? When you are ill do you go to a mundu-mugu for purification, or do you come to the hospital to be cured ?”

  Several men laughed at this a little uneasily and Jehoshophat tried to interrupt; but the dresser went on:

  “You know that you have accepted European customs and abandoned the old ones of the Kikuyu. And indeed I know that many European customs are better, for I have seen how pain and diseases can be cured by medicines in hospital and I know that they cannot be cured by the sacrifice of a goat. Now we can see that the circumcision of girls is a bad custom; other people do not have it, and God turns his back on such things. Some customs are good, and we should keep them; but the bad ones must go. When you say you are in favour of it I think you tell lies.”

  Jehoshophat grew very angry at this. He seized a stick from the fire and would have brought it down on the dresser’s head if someone had not held his arm.

  “You are a fool. Europeans have paid you to take their part!” he shouted. “Go away from this meeting, go back to your masters and tell them that we, the true Kikuyu, are not cowards like you. Do we try to make Europeans behave as we do ? Why then should Europeans try to make us behave as they do ? We are not to be treated like cattle, driven wherever the Europeans wish us to go ! Tell the European woman that she shall follow our custom, since she has tried to make our daughters follow hers!”

  The hospital dresser went out, taking with him one or two others who shared his opinions. Karanja was one of those who left. He did not agree with the dresser, but on the other hand Jehoshophat had a way of getting into trouble, and Karanja did not want to follow him to prison again. He could see, too, that there was a certain amount of truth in what the dresser had said. He knew himself that many of the old customs, such as greasing the body with ochre and laying curses on thieves, were stupid and dirty, and no longer practised by young men. It might perhaps be that the circumcision of girls was a custom of the same kind. But even so, he concluded, the Europeans had no right to interfere. Girls were the property of their fathers; who were the Europeans to say how they were to be brought up?

  5

  HE awoke late next morning, and while he was eating breakfast in the sunshine outside the hut he saw a party of policemen hurry by. After he had washed in the river he strolled up to the mission, chewing a stick of cane, to see if there was any news.

  The place was in extreme confusion. European officers were there, and many people were standing about watching a house which was guarded by policemen with rifles. He was horrified to hear what had occurred. The European woman with grey hair had been murdered in the night. Several people had broken into her house and found her in bed. She had been crudely circumcised in the Kikuyu fashion where she lay, and later in the night she had died from the wounds. The culprits had not yet been caught.

  Karanja turned away immediately and fled from the mission. He had no wish to be seen and questioned by the police. He got into the first train he could see, and by nightfall he was back in his own homestead. He said nothing to anyone of the woman’s death.

  The police did not follow, and within a few days he had recovered his composure sufficiently to teach young men the steps of the mambeleo, and girls the musirigo. The elders met in council and decided to hold a circumcision ceremony for boys and girls alike on the farm.

  One evening, when Karanja returned late to his homestead, he saw an unfamiliar green bicycle outside his hut; and in the thingira he found Jehoshophat drinking tea by the fire. The young man’s clothes were crumpled and dirty and he himself had lost his self-confident look. He shook hands warmly with Karanja and said:

  “I have come to the homestead of my circumcision-brother to rest, for I am weary after much work for the Association. Also, Benson Makuna wishes me to help the Kikuyu who live on European farms to resist any attempt to prevent them from circumcising their daughters. The Serkali is very frightened. Kikuyu circumcision ceremonies are being held everywhere, and the Serkali has not dared to stop them.”

  Karanja spoke little while they ate the hot food that Ngima brought them in calabashes. He was afraid of Jehoshophat, and wished his friend had not come. This man travelled everywhere with trouble for his shadow.

  “Have the police caught the men who killed the European woman?” he asked.

  Jehoshophat looked at him in silence for several moments, and Karanja read fear in his face.

  “No,” he said at last. “The police are fools; they will never catch anyone. Besides, those who circumcised her were the executors of justice, that is all. If Europeans force us to observe their customs, why should we not show them ours?”

  “Is it our custom to kill women?” Karanja replied. “My father, who knows all the old customs, has never told me of that. When he was a young man he killed Masai warriors in battle; I do not think that he killed women in bed.”

  “There was no need for her to die. Those who circumcised her did not intend to kill.”

  “Perhaps the European judge will believe that,” Karanja said.

  6

  JEHOSHOPHAT rode around Marafu’s farm on his bicycle urging all the elders to take the oath to have their daughters circumcised. Most of them did so, but Matu refused. He agreed with the principle of the oath, but he did not want to find himself evicted from his shamba, and his caution was stronger than his indignation. Another supervisor for the ceremony was elected, and a date fixed. Women began to prepare for brewing and the chorus of the mambeleo was heard every evening until late into the night.

  Then Jehoshophat started to tell the young men, at first in whispered confidences revealed to small groups, of a new and secret plan. The time had come, he said, for the Kikuyu to cease their abject obedience to the foreign oppressors. Were they not like oxen, yoked together by force and made to drag the heavy burden of taxes while Europeans walked beside them shouting orders and beating them with whips ? Were they to continue in this servile way for ever ? Were there not plenty of educated young men among the Kikuyu perfectly capable of taking over the government of the country from the Europeans, who had come here only in order to squeeze riches from the labour of the people as juice was wrung from cane ?

  These young men, Jehoshophat said, were alert and ready to seize their opportunity, as in the old days Kikuyu warriors had been ready to charge into battle at the sound of the war-horn. That opportunity was to be created by the fathers who would hold circumcision ceremonies everywhere for their daughters. The Europeans would send police to stop the dances; the offices of the Serkali would be left unguarded; the young men would capture them and seize the boxes where the tax money was kept. All the clerks, interpreters and telegraphists were in sympathy; it was they, and not the Europeans, who did the work. A powerful magic had been obtained to make all the European officers of the Serkali lose the power of their limbs, so that they would be unable to resist. Then the Kikuyu would rule the country and Benson Makuna would be in the Governor’s house. Then heavy taxes would cease; the Kikuyu would seize the Europeans’ land, their cattle, and their motor-cars.

  “And you,” Jehoshophat concluded, “you must lock this European Marafu into the store and seize all his cattle, and his house, and his motor-car, and then these shambas you are cultivating will become your own.”

  When Matu heard this talk he decided that Jehoshophat must be sent away. He could tell from the young man’s manner that he was telling lies. Only harm could
come of the presence on the farm of such an empty-headed fool.

  “Truly the saying that the mouth can sell the head is a wise one,” he observed. “This man talks like a hen; his words are all noise and no sense.”

  He went to Marafu’s house and told him what Jehoshophat had said. “Everything will be all right here if he is sent away,” he added, “but his words trouble the young men. Just as your dogs howl from restlessness when the moon is full, so his words bring disquiet into people’s minds.”

  “These young men have not enough work to do, that is the trouble,” said Marafu. “They are lazy, worthless fools. Tell this Jehoshophat that he is to come to see me at once, or I will send for the police.”

  Marafu was not in a good temper that morning. The cook had burnt the coffee, the rains were late, the planting delayed, and his youngest child was ill and had cried all night. When Jehoshophat arrived he was told abruptly to produce a kipandi; but he replied:

  “I do not carry one. Kipandis are for men who work on shambas, but I am an educated clerk and I do not need to carry one about.”

  “Kipandis are for everyone,” Marafu replied, angrily. “If you cannot show me yours I shall send for the police.”

  Jehoshophat felt confident that the European would not dare to make good his threats. He raised his voice, and answered:

  “Those are not good words to use to me. You cannot refuse to let me visit my friend Karanja because you claim this land. You Europeans have stolen land from my people; you have no right to say where a Kikuyu may walk and visit.”

  “Leave my farm at once, you impudent hyena !” Marafu exclaimed angrily. “Do not ever set foot on my land again!”

  “Do not call me a hyena!” Jehoshophat retorted. “You cannot order me about like this! I, who am a Government clerk, tell you …”

  He could not finish the sentence, for Marafu hit him brutally in the face, and retreated into the house before he could recover. “So this is your friend!” the European exclaimed to Karanja. “You will go too, if he ever comes to my farm again.”