by Mike Resnick
“You are still the brightest young man on Kirinyaga,” I said truthfully, “so I will pose you a question, and I will expect an honest answer. You seek after history, and I seek after truth. Which do you suppose is the more important?”
He frowned. “They are the same,” he answered. “History is truth.”
“No,” I replied. “History is a compilation of facts and events, which is subject to constant reinterpretation. It begins with truth and evolves into fable. My stories begin with fable and evolve into truth.”
“If you are right,” he said thoughtfully, “then your stories are more important than history.”
“Very well, then,” I said, hoping that the matter was closed.
“But,” he added, “I am not sure that you are right. I will have to think more about it.”
“Do that,” I said. “You are an intelligent boy. You will come to the right conclusion.”
Ndemi turned and began walking off in the direction of his family's shamba. The children rushed back as soon as he was out of sight, and once more squatted in a tight semicircle.
“Have you an answer to my question, Koriba?” asked Mdutu.
“I cannot recall your question,” I said.
“Was our only king a white man?”
“Yes.”
“How could that be?”
I considered my response for a long moment.
“I will answer that by telling you the story of the little Kikuyu girl who became, very briefly, the queen of all the elephants,” I said.
“What has that to do with the white man who became our king?” persisted Mdutu.
“Listen carefully,” I instructed him, “for when I am done, I shall ask you many questions about my story, and before we are through, you will have the answer to your own question.”
He leaned forward attentively, and I began reciting my fable.
I returned to my boma to take the noon meal. After I had finished it, I decided to take a nap during the heat of the day, for I am an old man and it had been a long, wearing morning. I let my goats and chickens loose on my hillside, secure in the knowledge that no one would take them away since they each carried the mundumugtis mark. I had just spread my sleeping blanket out beneath the branches of my acacia tree when I saw two figures at the foot of my hill.
At first I thought they were two village boys, looking for cattle that had strayed from their pastures, but when the figures began walking up the slopes of my hill I was finally able to focus my eyes on them. The larger figure was Shima, Ndemi's mother, and the smaller was a goat that she led by a rope that she had tied around its neck.
Finally she reached my boma, somewhat out of breath, for the goat was unused to the rope and constantly pulled against it, and opened the gate.
“fambo, Shima,” I said, as she entered the boma. “Why have you brought your goat to my hill? You know that only my own goats may graze here.”
“It is a gift for you, Koriba,” she replied.
“For me?” I said. “But I have done you no service in exchange fork.”
“You can, though. You can take Ndemi back. He is a good boy, Koriba.”
“But—”
“He will never be late again,” she promised. “He truly did save our goat from a hyena. He would never lie to his mundumugu. He is young, but he can become a great mundumugu someday. I know he can, if you will just teach him. You are a wise man, Koriba, and you have made a wise choice in Ndemi. I do not know why you have banished him, but if you will just take him back he will never misbehave again. He wants only to become a great mundumugu like yourself. Though of course,” she added hastily, “he could never be as great as you.”
“Will finally you let me speak?” I asked irritably.
“Certainly, Koriba.”
“I did not cast Ndemi out. He left of his own volition.”
Her eyes widened. “Heleftyou?”
“He is young, and rebellion is part of youth.”
“So is foolishness!” she exclaimed furiously. “He has always been foolish. And late! He was even two weeks late being born when I carried him! He is always thinking, instead of doing his chores. For the longest time I thought we had been cursed, but then you made him your assistant, and I was to become the mother of the mundumugu— and now he has ruined everything!”
She let go of the rope, and the goat wandered around my boma as she began beating her breasts with her fisis.
“Why am I so cursed?” she demanded. “Why does Ngai give me a fool for a son, and then stir my hopes by sending him to you, and then curse me doubly by returning him, almost a man and unable to perform any of the chores on our shamba} What will become of him? Who will accept a bride-price from such a fool? He will be late to plant our seed and late to harvest it, he will be late to choose a bride and late to make the payment on her, and he will end up living with the unmarried men at the edge of the forest and begging for food. With my luck he will even be late to die!” She paused for breath, then began wailing again, and finally screamed: “Why does Ngai hate me so?”
“Calm yourself, Shima,” I said.
“It is easy for you to say!” she sobbed. “You have not lost all hope for your future.”
“My future is of very limited duration,” I said. “It is Kirinyaga's future that concerns me.”
“See?” she said, wailing and beating her breasts again. “See? I am the mother of the boy who will destroy Kirinyaga!”
“I did not say that.”
“What has he done, Koriba?” she said. “Tell me, and I will have his father and brothers beat him until he behaves.”
“Beating him is not the solution,” I said. “He is young, and he rebels against my authority. It is the way of things. Before long he will realize that he is wrong.”
“I will explain to him all that he can lose, and he will know that he should never disagree with you, and he will come back.”
“You might suggest it,” I encouraged her. “I am an old man, and I have much left to teach him.”
“I will do as you say, Koriba,” she promised.
“Good,” I said. “Now go back to your shamba and speak to Ndemi, for I have other things to do.”
It was not until I awoke from my nap and returned to the village to sit at the Council of Elders that I realized just how many things I had to do.
Our daily business is always conducted in late afternoon, when the heat of the day has passed, at the boma of Koinnage, the paramount chief. One by one the Elders place their mats in a semicircle and sit on them, with my place being at Koinnage's right hand. The boma is cleared of all women, children, and animals, and when the last of us has arrived, Koinnage calls us into session. He announces what problems are to be considered, and then I ask Ngai to guide our judgment and allow us to come to just decisions.
On this particular day, two of the villagers had asked the Council of Elders to determine the ownership of a calf that was born to a cow they jointly owned; Sebana wanted permission to divorce his youngest wife, who had now been barren for three years; and Kijo's three sons were unhappy with the way his estate had been divided among them.
Koinnage consulted with me in low whispers after each petition had been heard, and took my advice, as always. The calf went to the man who had fed the cow during her pregnancy, with the understanding that the other man should own the next calf. Sebana was told that he could divorce his wife, but would not receive the bride-price back, and he elected to keep her. Kijo's sons were told that they could accept the division as it was, or if two of them agreed, I would place three colored stones in a gourd, and they could each withdraw a stone and own the shamba that it represented. Since each faced the possibility of ending up with the smallest shamba, only one brother voted for our solution, as I had foreseen, and the petition was dismissed.
At this point, Koinnage's senior wife, Wambu, would usually appear with a large gourd of pombe, and we would drink it and then return to our bomas, but this day Wambu did not c
ome, and Koinnage turned nervously to me.
“There is one thing more, Koriba,” he said.
“Oh?”
He nodded, and I could see the muscles in his face tensing as he worked up the courage to confront his mundumugu.
“You have told us that Ngai handed the burning spear to Jomo Kenyatta, that he might create Mau Mau and drive the Europeans from Kenya.”
“That is true,” I said.
“Is it?” he replied. “I have been told that he himself married a European woman, that Mau Mau did not succeed in driving the Europeans from the holy mountain, and that Jomo Kenyatta was not even his real name—that he was actually born with the European name Johnstone.” He stared at me, half-accusing, half-terrified of arousing my wrath. “What have you to say to this, Koriba?”
I met his gaze and held it for a long time, until he finally dropped his eyes. Then, one by one, I looked coldly at each member of the Council.
“So you prefer to believe a foolish young boy to your own mundu-mugu?” I demanded.
“We do not believe the boy, but the computer,” said Karenja.
“And have you spoken to the computer yourselves?”
“No,” said Koinnage. “That is another thing we must discuss.
Ndemi tells me that your computer speaks to him and tells him many things, while my computer can do nothing but send messages to the other chiefs.”
“It is a mundumugus tool, not to be used by other men,” I replied.
“Why?” asked Karenja. “It knows many things that we do not know. We could learn much from it.”
“You have learned much from it,” I said. “It speaks to me, and I speak to you.”
“But it also speaks to Ndemi,” continued Karenja, “and if it can speak to a boy barely past circumcision age, why can it not speak directly to the Elders of the village?”
I turned to Karenja and held my two hands in front of me, palms up. “In my left hand is the meat of an impala that I killed today,” I said. “In my right is the meat of an impala that I killed five days ago and left to sit in the sun. It is covered with ants, worms crawl through it, and it stinks.” I paused. “Which of the two pieces of meat will you eat?”
“The meat in your left hand,” he answered.
“But both pieces of meat came from the same herd of impala,” I pointed out. “Both animals were equally fat and healthy when they died.”
“But the meat in your right hand is rotten,” he said.
“That is true,” I agreed. “And just as there can be good and bad meat, so there can be good and bad facts. The facts Ndemi has related to you come from books written by the Europeans, and facts can mean different things to them than they mean to us.”
I paused while they considered what I had said, and then continued. “A European may look upon the savannah and envision a city, while a Kikuyu may look at the same savannah and see a shamba. A European may look at an elephant and see ivory trinkets, while a Kikuyu may look at the same elephant and see food for his village, or destruction for his crops. And yet they are looking at the same land, and the same animal.
“Now,” I said, once again looking at each of them in turn, “I have been to school in Europe, and in America, and only I, of all the men and women on Kirinyaga, have lived among the white man. And I tell you that only I, your mundumugu, am capable of separating the good facts from the bad facts. It was a mistake to allow Ndemi to speak with my computer; I will not allow it again, until I have given him more of my wisdom.”
I had thought my statement would put an end to the matter, but as I looked around I saw signs of discomfort, as if they wished to argue with me but lacked the courage. Finally Koinnage leaned forward and, without looking directly at me, said, “Do you not see what you are saying, Koriba? If the mundumugu can make a mistake by allowing a young boy to speak with his computer, can he not also make a mistake by not allowing the Elders to speak to it?”
I shook my head. “It is a mistake to allow any Kikuyu except the mundumugu to speak to it.”
“But there is much that we can learn from it,” persisted Koinnage.
“What?” I asked bluntly.
He shrugged helplessly. “If I knew, then I would already have learned it.”
“How many times must I repeat this to you: there is nothing to be learned from the Europeans. The more you try to become like them, the less you remain Kikuyu. This is our Utopia, a Kikuyu Utopia. We must fight to preserve it.”
“And yet,” said Karenja, “even the word Utopia is European, is knot?”
“You heard that from Ndemi, too?” I asked without hiding the annoyance in my voice.
He nodded his head. “Yes.”
“Utopia is just a word,” I said. “It is the idea that counts.”
“If the Kikuyu have no word for it and the Europeans do, perhaps it is a European idea,” said Karenja. “And if we have built our world upon a European idea, perhaps there are other European ideas that we can also use.”
I looked at their faces, and realized, for perhaps the first time, that most of the original Elders of Kirinyaga had died. Old Siboki remained, and I could tell by his face that he found European ideas even more abhorrent than I myself did, and there were two or three others, but this was a new generation of Elders, men who had come to maturity on Kirinyaga and could not remember the reasons we had fought so hard to come here.
“If you want to become black Europeans, go back to Kenya!” I snapped in disgust. “It is filled with them!”
“We are not black Europeans,” said Karenja, refusing to let the matter drop. “We are Kikuyu who think it is possible that not all European ideas are harmful.”
“Any idea that changes us is harmful,” I said.
“Why?” asked Koinnage, his courage to oppose me growing as he realized that many of the Elders supported him. “Where is it written that a Utopia cannot grow and change? If that were the case, we would have ceased to be a Utopia the day the first baby was born on Kirinyaga.”
“There are as many Utopias as there are races,” I said. “None among you would argue that a Kikuyu Utopia is the same as a Maasai Utopia or a Samburu Utopia. By the same token, a Kikuyu Utopia cannot be a European Utopia. The closer you come to the one, the further you move from the other.”
They had no answer to that, and I got to my feet.
“I am your mundumugu? I said. “I have never misled you. You have always trusted my judgment in the past. You must trust in it in this instance.”
As I began walking out of the boma, I heard Karenja's voice behind me.
“If you were to die tomorrow, Ndemi would become our mundu-mugu. Are you saying we should trust his judgment as we trust yours?”
I turned to face him. “Ndemi is very young and inexperienced. You, as the Elders of the village, would have to use your wisdom to decide whether or not what he says is correct.”
“A bird that has been caged all its life cannot fly,” said Karenja, “just as a flower that has been kept from the sun will not blossom.”
“What is your point?” I asked.
“Shouldn't we begin using our wisdom now, lest we forget how when Ndemi has become the mundumugu}”
This time it was I who had no answer, so I turned on my heel and began the long walk back to my hill.
For five days I fetched my own water and made my own fires, and then Ndemi returned, as I had known he would.
I was sitting in my boma, idly watching a herd of gazelles grazing across the river, when he trudged up the path to my hill, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
“famboy Ndemi,” I said. “It is good to see you again.”
“fambo, Koriba,” he replied.
“And how was your vacation?” I asked, but there is no Swahili word for vacation so I used the English term and the humor and sarcasm were lost on him.
“My father urged me to come back,” he said, bending over to pet one of my goats, and I saw the welts on his back that constituted his “urgi
ng.”
“I am glad to have you back, Ndemi,” I said. “We have become like father and son, and it pains me when we argue, as I am sure it pains you.”
“It does pain me,” he admitted. “I do not like to disagree with you, Koriba.”
“We have both made mistakes,” I continued. “You argued with your mundumugu, and I allowed you access to information before you were mature enough to know what to do with it. We are both intelligent enough to learn from our mistakes. You are still my chosen successor. It shall be as if it never happened.”
“But it did happen, Koriba,” he said.
“We shall pretend it did not.”
“I do not think I can do that,” said Ndemi unhappily, protecting his eyes as a sudden wind blew dust across the boma. “I learned many things when I spoke to the computer. How can I unlearn them?”
“If you cannot unlearn them, then you will have to ignore them until you are older,” I said, “I am your teacher. The computer is just a tool. You will use it to bring the rains, and to send an occasional message to Maintenance, and that is all.”
A black kite swooped down and made off with a scrap of my morning meal that had fallen beside the embers of my fire. I watched it while I waited for Ndemi to speak.
“You appear troubled,” I said, when it became apparent that he would not speak first. “Tell me what bothers you.”
“It was you who taught me to think, Koriba,” he said as various emotions played across his handsome young face. “Would you have me stop thinking now, just because I think differently than you do?”
“Of course I do not want you to stop thinking, Ndemi,” I said, not without sympathy, for I understood the forces at war within him. “What good would a mundumugu be if he could not think? But just as there are right and wrong ways to throw a spear, there are right and wrong ways to think. I wish only to see you take the path of true wisdom.”
“It will be greater wisdom if I come upon it myself,” he said. “I must learn as many facts as I can, so that I can properly decide which are helpful and which are harmful.”