Writing for Kenya

by Wangari Muoria-Sal

  Muoria was a well-known writer and Ruth knew about his work, espe-

  cially the newspaper Mumenyereri. Muoria was a prosperous man—a

  husband and the father of several children. He owned land, two cars,

  grew crops and had built a substantial house for himself and his fam-

  University of California. Los Angeles, 1968); Luise White, Th

  e Comforts of Home.

  Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago and London: Th

  e University of Chicago

  Press, 1990); Bodil Folke Frederiksen, ‘Making Popular Culture from Above: Leisure in Nairobi 1945–60’, in Liz Gunner (ed.) Collected Seminar Papers (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1995).

  27 Interview, London, July 2000.

  28 On colonial use of radio, see Frederiksen, ‘Making Popular Culture’.

  the muorias in kenya

  77

  ily. His newspaper was doing well. A few days aft er meeting Ruth, he

  visited her mother in Pumwani. She liked her daughter’s suitor and

  agreed that he wrote ‘good things about people’.29 A fortnight later

  Muoria off ered to give Ruth a lift in his car when she was going to

  visit her grandmother Pricilla. She had retired to her rural home close

  to Muoria’s own home aft er having handed her property over to her

  daughter. Ruth accepted and soon aft er Henry asked her to marry

  him. Her reaction was to point out that he was married already, but

  he persuaded her that he was allowed to marry again and promised to

  talk to his second wife, Judith.

  Ruth’s mother was surprised that out of many suitors her daughter

  had picked Muoria. She did not have reservations about Ruth being

  in a polygamous marriage as long as she loved her husband and he

  could provide for her. She did, however, have reservations about rural

  life and the role of her city-bred daughter on a farm. Ruth assured her

  that she would not have to do any farm labour as there were people

  working for her future husband. She let Grace keep her young daugh-

  ter for company and for reasons of access to schools, and settled in

  the brick house in Nyathuna, which she shared with Judith, who was

  friendly and showed her around. For a time, Muoria and his wives and

  children were able to pursue peaceful and productive lives. However,

  with the intense political activity building up to the Mau Mau crisis

  and the increasing suppression of African activities and organisations,

  everything changed drastically during the fi rst years of the new decade,

  and especially aft er Muoria had left for Britain.

  Like Judith, Ruth was made to bear the brunt of British suppression

  of particularly Kikuyu women. She had a troubled time aft er Muoria’s

  departure. Kiambu was one of the hearts of Kikuyu political activity and

  unsafe for the wives of a well-known African journalist, as Judith’s fate

  had demonstrated. Ruth took her children, left Nyathuna and returned

  to her mother in the city. Pumwani, however, was another centre of

  unrest. Th

  e authorities repeatedly screened inhabitants, ostensibly to

  fi nd instigators of the Mau Mau oathing ceremonies, in fact to empty

  the city of Kikuyu, Embu and Meru, who were the key groups behind

  the nationalist uprising. Th

  e screening operations could take place at any

  time and took many forms. Ruth describes one in which men, women

  29 Interview with Ruth’s daughter Christine Gathoni, Nairobi, November 1999.

  78

  chapter two

  and children were made to march past police cars where African inform-

  ers, hidden behind dark windows, would point out troublemakers:

  I used to go for screening carrying my baby on the back. . . . Everybody

  was taken out of their houses and made to walk in the sunshine. Th

  e baby

  I carried on my back, the other one I held in my hand. . . . We had to

  go there. I used to pray to God, because sometimes they used to choose

  anybody at random. Not because they had done something wrong. Th

  ey

  were paid for arresting more people. . . . Lots of women were arrested . . . at that time they did not choose. Even the Vicar, they used to arrest. Th

  ey

  used to accuse even Christians. Th

  ey were bad people.30

  Luckily, Ruth was not among those picked up. She moved on from the

  insecurity in Pumwani to a house in Makadara, an African neighbour-

  hood further to the east. Her husband’s urgent wish that she join him

  in London in 1954 came at a very diffi

  cult time, but by going Ruth

  probably saved him from deep depression—a condition he describes

  in his autobiographical manuscripts31—and enabled him to be a happy

  father and to continue as a productive writer. Henry and Ruth’s exile

  in Britain meant both that the very foundations of the family were

  shaken, but also that resourceful helpers mobilized and came to their

  assistance.

  Growing up in Nairobi in the 1950s and 1960s:

  Th

  e sisters from Pumwani.

  Ruth left for London, certain that Grace Njoki and the network of Pum-

  wani women, in which she was a leading fi gure, would take excellent care

  of her four daughters, Mary Njoki, Hellen Wambui, Christine Gathoni

  and Margaret Waringa. Th

  e rural branch of the extended Muoria family

  could also be relied on to help out. Th

  e girls grew up where their great

  grandmother had settled, in the area known as Majengo in the heart

  of Pumwani. As we have seen, colonial offi

  cials regarded Pumwani as

  neighbourhood that was almost ungovernable, singling out the women

  of the area as particularly diffi

  cult. Th

  is perception from outside stands

  in strong contrast to the Muoria family’s memories of respectable and

  socially mobile middle class living with an emphasis on education and

  with women forming the hard-working core.

  30 Interview Ruth Muoria, London, July 2000.

  31 I, the Gikuyu, 77.

  the muorias in kenya

  79

  Although Pumwani was marked by poverty and, aft er 1952, by the

  policing and control that were the consequences of the Emergency, it

  was also a ‘smart place’.32 It was known as a neighbourhood where it

  was good to relax, and it was home to a good number of bars and eating

  places as well as being well known for prostitution. Th

  e area housed

  several schools, a large maternity hospital and a colonial chief ’s camp

  and police station. Th

  e two municipal community halls, Kaloleni and

  Pumwani, hosted a number of activities. Th

  ere was a library, regular

  evening classes in home economics, health and hygiene, spinning and

  weaving, and in languages—English and Swahili. Voluntary associations

  and clubs were in charge of exhibitions, tea parties and sports.

  Grace brought up her four grandchildren as her own daughters.

  When, for a period, she worked as a nanny for white families, her

  sister looked aft er the girls. Grace had small jobs of teaching Swahili

  locally, but the major part of her income came from letting rooms in

  her properties in Pumwani, Kawangwa
re and other Eastlands estates,

  and from running the bar. Unlike her mother, who had sold home

  brew, she would sell and serve bottled beer in her sitting room. Th

  e

  atmosphere was friendly. Bottled beer was for leisure consumption,

  whereas it was well known that the men who drank the Kikuyu home

  brew muratina were engaged in nationalist politics. Th

  e clientele of the

  bar were ‘professionals’ and a ‘better class of people’, and included a

  Kenya Broadcasting Company broadcaster and a future manager of the

  East African Airways.33 Money for school fees for the girls came from

  these activities. Once a month Muoria’s fi rst wife, Elizabeth, who was

  a skillful farmer, brought food from the fi elds owned by Muoria in the

  family’s upcountry home.

  Grace was known in Pumwani for looking aft er the four sisters very

  carefully. She was ‘the one who brought them up, saw them through

  school, through everything.’ Th

  e four girls called her ‘Mama’, and

  although she was strict they were very close to her: Hellen tells that she

  is happy that she was brought up by her Grandmother: ‘I don’t regret it

  at all.’34 Th

  e girls were educated at fi rst locally, later, for their secondary

  education, at boarding schools. It was known in the neighbourhood that

  they were the daughters of an important fi gure. Christine tells that at

  32 Interview with Hellen and John Gichache, Ruth’s daughter and son-in-law,

  Nairobi, December 1999.

  33 Interview with Hellen and John Gichache, Nairobi, December 1999.

  34 Interview with Hellen and John Gichache, Nairobi, December 1999.

  80

  chapter two

  Primary School ‘we were famous because of our father, who was known

  as a Kikuyu journalist. All the teachers knew him through reading his

  magazines.’35 Th

  e girls had a Kikuyu and Christian upbringing, Gikuyu

  and Christian names.

  Th

  e eldest daughter, Mary Grace Njoki, named aft er her grandmother,

  went to a Catholic boarding school. She tells her early story like this:

  We were staying with Mum and Dad at Eastleigh Section 3 and our

  Dad used to go to print his magazines and our Mum was selling them

  at diff erent places. My Dad had a Citroën car, which was taking us to

  Church. When my Dad went to London we didn’t know, and we moved

  from Eastleigh to Majengo36 with our Mum. Th

  en later we moved to

  Bahati because the colonial Home Guard wanted to arrest Mum. Aft er

  some months Mum got her passport and she went to London 1954. We

  were left with our Grandmother. She took care of us, educating us, and

  everything she did for us.37

  Her younger sister, Christine, tells of an early childhood made unstable

  by the Mau Mau emergency, but also full of love:

  I am the third born of Muoria’s family, born in 1950. My parents went

  to London when I was still young. . . . When our mother was still here

  we stayed in Bahati Estate where I could hear some gun shots—people

  were being shot and we were not allowed to go out since it was during

  the Emergency. Aft er Bahati we moved to Eastleigh and stayed with a

  landlady called Josephine Muthoni who now owns Sun City Cinema

  and is a very rich woman.38 We came back to Majengo where we stayed

  with our grandmother aft er my mother left us. We were told that she

  fl ew to London with a bird called Hongo. We were taken care of by our grandmother who loved us so much.39

  Grace was a well-known fi gure in Pumwani. Her great grandson Julius,

  son of Christine, now in his thirties, tells that ‘she was known all around

  as Mother Bigi . . . because she used to be huge.’40 She became front-page news during a Miss Kenya Beauty Contest when, bored with the

  predictability and lack of action of the prize-giving event, she jumped

  35 Personal letter from Christine Gathoni, November 2002.

  36 Majengo—‘buildings’ in Swahili, is the centre of Pumwani.

  37 Personal letter, November 1999.

  38 Josephine Muthoni was earlier in detention camp with Muoria’s fi rst wife, Judith.

  With Judith she complained about conditions in the camp. Her assistance to Ruth is another testimony of the strong network of women, functioning in African Nairobi.

  See footnote 26.

  39 Personal letter, November 2002.

  40 Personal letter, November 2002.

  the muorias in kenya

  81

  onto the stage and successfully challenged the contestants. Julius’ cousin

  Nuna, daughter of Hellen, remembers that her great grandmother

  looked aft er her frequently: ‘She looked very prominent. I used to think

  of her as a queen. She was big. She was sitting on that chair there and

  everybody was coming to her, she was giving instructions, that was

  a very beautiful woman. . . . I think we called her Mama . . . or Nyanya wa Majengo (‘Grandmother of Majengo’) . We had a lot of Nyanya s, you know.’ Nuna thinks of her as a rich woman who would give her

  and the other great granddaughters small gift s and whose house was

  ‘beautiful and clean’.41

  Aft er Grace’s four granddaughters had grown up and had children

  of their own, they went on conducting their family celebrations in the

  house in Majengo with Grace as the towering center. And aft er her

  death in 1977, the sisters have held a memorial party, ukumbusho,

  every year on the day of her death, a celebration which involves a visit

  to their grandmother’s grave, cooking and eating a meal of rice and

  chicken, and pouring Tusker beer on the ground outside the house as

  a greeting to the deceased.42

  Education, private enterprise and urban property have been central

  to the power of women in the Nairobi branch of the family. Henry and

  Ruth’s four daughters have worked either as professionals in business

  organizations or as independent entrepreneurs. Ruth, who inherited the

  Pumwani house from her mother, has left it to Mary, her eldest daughter

  and the fourth woman in a direct line of descent to own the property.

  Th

  e other three daughters have inherited the houses their grandmother

  built in the Eastlands estate of Makadara and other urban property. All

  have small pieces of land in the family’s rural home in Kiambu.

  Beer is still sold in Pumwani as part of the family business—now

  from a regular bar owned by Mary and run with family labour. Th

  e bar,

  which adjoins the house where her sister Christine lives with her sons,

  their wives and her grandchildren, consists of two large rooms with a

  jukebox, acquired by the family in the 1950s, and a more recent pool

  table. Th

  e atmosphere is still friendly and the billiards and beer are both

  very popular with young Tanzanian men who operate profi table sale of

  second-hand clothes, mitumba, and, like their great grandmothers who

  came to Pumwani in the 1930s and 1940s, lead migrants’ lives.

  41 Interview with Nuna Gichache, Oakland, April 2003.

  42 Interview with Nuna Gichache, Oakland, April 2003.

  82

  chapter two

  Links and splits: Nyathuna, Nairobi,

  London—19
60s to 1990s

  During the 1960s and 1970s the three branches of the Muoria family

  in London, Nairobi and Kiambu were busy keeping the families afl oat

  and putting children through school and further education. Letters kept

  up the contact between the London and the Kenya families in Nairobi

  and Nyathuna. Henry Muoria was a regular correspondent, writing in

  Gikuyu from his north London home. He told news of life in London

  and about the lives of Ruth’s and his seven London born children, four

  sons and three daughters. Besides working as a guard on the London

  Underground, Muoria had to learn to cook and make clothes for the

  children when his wife had health problems. In a diffi

  cult period around

  the late 1960s, Ruth’s mother assisted the London family fi nancially.

  Money and assistance again fl owed from mother to daughter, but this

  time from Majengo to the Metropole.

  Ruth’s Nairobi-born daughters did not have much contact with the

  upcountry family but they would visit once in a while. Christine remem-

  bers paying a long visit to the landed Muoria clan aft er her uncle had

  been killed in an accident: ‘When we were there we were able to see

  our grandmother Nyiuru Wambui and our stepmothers Th

  ogori and

  Judith . . . and we were also introduced to our step brothers and sister

  Rosabell. We also visited Gikuni and met our great grandmother.’43

  Th

  e grandmother she refers to was Henry’s mother who was still alive

  and resided in Nyathuna. Th

  e great grandmother was Grace’s mother,

  Pricilla, the founding matriarch of the Nairobi Muorias, who had retired

  to a comfortable life in the countryside, made possible by her daughter’s

  remittances from the city.

  In the 1950s and 60s, when Muoria’s sons and daughters grew up,

  income from cultivation and trade in agricultural products was not

  enough for an expanding family. Land ownership was contested in the

  fertile tracts, and Muoria’s frst wife Elizabeth was involved in several

  cases of litigation. In the early 1970s the mbari got together and invested in a bus, an enterprise that Alex Muoria, the grandson in charge of

  the rural farm, thinks would have made the family prosperous had it

  been sustained.44 At the same time a growing economy made urban

  43 Personal letter, November 2002.

  44 Interview, Kiambu, October 2000.