In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  I had not seen him since that day he came down from the mountains by night, an armed guerrilla, to wish me success in my end of the primary school exams. I put on my Alliance uniform to show him that his prayers and wishes had been met. He was together with other prisoners but was allowed to come to the wall of barbed wire. Ngenia was not a heavily fortified prison: who would want to break prison on the last stage of their release? Still, the state wanted to make sure that the freedom fighters were seen as captives, common criminals, and not the heroes of people’s political imagination. But Good Wallace would always be a hero to me. I fought back tears of joy, tinged with sorrow at the sight of him caged. He was quick to note my khaki shorts, shirt, and blue tie. The look and the smile on his face spoke of gratitude and satisfaction, as if the uniform were worthy of all the suffering he had undergone. As we parted, his older-brother instinct kicked in: he reminded me to take off the uniform and wear regular clothes so as not to get it soiled and ruffled. This assertion said it all. He had survived police chases, the mountains, and concentration camps. He was alive and well.

  My reunion with Good Wallace was followed by another break without mishap. I met with the group of boys and girls I had been trying to organize. After much discussion, we decided against a debating club: we wanted an activity that might also attract our parents. We settled on songs for a possible December performance. During the term we could not all meet together, so we arranged ourselves into groups on the principle of proximity: those from the same school would practice together. With everybody having learned the songs, it would be easier to put everything together whenever opportunities arose for the entire group to meet.

  When I returned to Alliance for my third term on September 5, 1957, I felt good that I had put in place a performance group to improve the social life of the new village. But the biggest satisfaction came from memories of my brief reunion with my brother, despite the barbed wire between us.

  39

  On October 4, a month into the third term, the Soviets, or the Russians as we called them, launched Sputnik I into space—the first man-made, earth-orbiting satellite in history. For some reason, this did not make a splash at our school. But on November 4 everything changed. News reached Kenya, as it did all over the world, that the same Russians had now launched Sputnik II, and it carried a dog named Laika. This event raised a hue and cry from white people from all corners of the colony: the Russians had sent a dog to die in space.

  At an emergency school assembly, Carey Francis condemned this premeditated cruelty. Some students could not understand how the death of a dog in space could spur such anger and grief. For me, Laika rhymed with Malaika, and it sounded as if an angel had been sent to space, but then angels dwelled in a heaven beyond the clouds. An angel sent to die in heaven?

  Then I learned that Laika was actually a stray dog from the streets of Moscow. The Gĩkũyũ word for stray dogs, ngui cia njangiri, or simply njangiri, was also the word for the homeless and the irresponsible. Boys threw stones at stray dogs. Despite the fact that dogs had once bitten me, I never could stand their screams: they eerily evoked the cries of humans in pain.

  In our new village, stray dogs turned into hordes of marauders roaming the streets, often fighting among themselves for leftovers. The hungry dogs became bolder, sometimes growling and snatching food from little children and old people. The colonial state must have been given the order to reduce their population because there came a time when, instead of boys chasing dogs for fun, it was armed home guards hunting and gunning them down. Hunting dogs became an official colonial sport. Three or four policemen could chase the dogs across hills and valleys, competing with each other to see who could bag the most. By zigging and zagging with speed, the dogs often frustrated their marksmanship.

  During the entire anti-stray-dog campaign, I never heard of voices raised in protest. And now this outburst for Laika! Looking back on all the dogs killed in our village, I could not help noting the irony that a stray dog from the streets of Moscow had done what no human had ever done before; that though forced, a njangiri had been the chosen vehicle for dramatizing the dawn of a new age. Once again the street had demonstrated its power.

  40

  Mourners of the anticolonial resistance used to sing, sorrowfully though secretly, that when patriot Kĩmathi died, the moon and the stars shed blood. The moon was a crucial symbol in the Shakespeare play of the year, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which revealed the true magic of theater to me. Its plays-within-a-play structure; its overall fairy atmosphere, where fantasy and reality became each other in an abandon of passions of mistaken identities; and the use of love potions to confuse and clarify matters of the heart had a familiar ring to them, recalling the magic of African oral stories, where metamorphosis was a common feature.

  I never wrote, directed, or played a major role in any play at Alliance, but it was the school productions that finally shaped my work with the Limuru youth group. We would be putting on a performance in two interrelated parts, which would end in the form of a Christmas pageant. The first part, a kind of musical concert that included many of the spirituals I had learned at Alliance, from Joseph Kariuki, was organized around the theme of new life. It was really a preparation for the second part, a reenactment of the journey of the magi. As the three kings carrying myrrh and frankincense entered Kamandũra church from the outside and walked down the aisle toward the altar, the concert group joined in the singing:

  O star of wonder, star of light,

  Star with royal beauty bright,

  Westward leading, still proceeding,

  Guide us to thy perfect light.

  The perfect light came from a manger near the altar. To the traditional journey of the magi, I had added comic relief: a parallel pageant of local shepherds looking for a lost pregnant sheep, who are delighted when they spot the same manger. They take it that their lost sheep has given birth and is feeding its young in the manger. They are baffled when they find a human figure being talked about as a lamb. But when they learn that the newborn is a child of God, they join the other pageant in songs, celebrating the new life. This theme held together the mixture of spirituals, carols, and some songs based on traditional Gĩkũyũ melodies.

  Nothing like it had been seen in Kamandũra. It became the talk of the church and the village. Led by Edward Matumbi, the elders later approached me to turn the group into the nucleus of a regular church choir. The invitation was tempting, but organizing such a disparate group would have been hard work and taken a lot of time, and we were not able to continue.

  For me, the performance helped intensify my sense of connection with Kamĩrĩthũ.* But for many others, the vision of a new life amid the anticolonial war may have hit home in a way that I had not consciously intended: the spirituals and the carols embodied hope for a new life, a theme the dwellers of the new village could embrace whatever their side in the unfolding political struggle.

  * This was the beginning of my interest in community theater, with consequences that would change my life. See I Will Marry When I Want, a play, and Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary.

  1958

  A Tale of Two Missions

  41

  From the first term of my last year at Alliance, our eyes and ears were mesmerized by the political drama as it played out in the streets and legislative chambers of the country. The drama peaked sharply soon after the March elections, which added six more African elected members under yet another revised constitution, the Lennox-Boyd Plan, to make a total of fourteen, achieving parity with Europeans for the first time.

  While welcoming the six directly elected members into their midst, AEMO rejected the portion of the Lennox-Boyd Plan that provided for twelve specially elected members, four for each racial group, albeit on a common nonracial roll. Proportionate to the racial populations represented, a single European was assumed to be equal to hundreds of Africans. AEMO had learned well the tactic of agreeing to the positive portions of an agreement and then re
jecting the sections they deemed detrimental to African interests. On March 25, literally a day after the elections, AEMO released a statement strongly denouncing the Africans who had offered themselves for the special seats, describing them as stooges, quislings, and black Europeans.

  On April 16, the day of our first break, the state charged the seven authors of the quisling document with defamation and sedition. The case, in the middle of our second term, became a cause célèbre, the word quisling taking center stage. Not even Philip Ochieng, the most fascinated by words among us, knew the meaning, and we had to reach for dictionaries, some of which were not particularly helpful. The word was loaded with irony. It was coined by the British press in the 1940s from the name of the Norwegian fascist leader, Vidkun Quisling, who collaborated with Hitler in the invasion of his own country. Churchill would later use the word in his 1941 address to Americans, evoking the flames of anger that burned among the British people against the brutal Nazi would-be invader of his country. Fifteen years later leaders of the Kenya Africans were using the coinage against those deemed to be collaborating with the brutal British invaders. The trial resulted only in fines of seventy-five pounds for each of the seven accused, but by then, the flames of nationalism were burning in the entire country.

  The state’s worst fears would soon come to haunt them. The drama on the street and in the legal chambers moved to a completely different level when, on June 26, on the floor of Legco, Oginga Odinga declared that Kenyatta and the others imprisoned with him were still the political leaders of the Kenyan people. Even his colleagues in AEMO were surprised and hesitant, and it took the groundswell in the country to make them come around to Oginga Odinga’s position. He had brought the power of the street into the chamber of political decorum, and the street had won. The subsequent rallying cry in the streets became Uhuru na Kenyatta.

  42

  The year may have been one of great political drama, but for us in Form Four, the greatest test of our entire educational lives, like the sword of Damocles, hovered over all our activities and thoughts. Every year of my life in the school so far had had its own internal dynamics. In the first year, I had looked forward to familiarizing myself with the school and settling down. In the second year, the sense that I belonged was affirmed by the presence of new freshmen. The third year had a serenity of ownership. By the beginning of the fourth year, one had learned fully how to negotiate the three sites that made the Alliance ideal: the chapel for the soul; the playing fields for the body; and the classroom for the mind. This triumph, however, carried a contradiction: now every activity was a swan song; every day that passed was one step closer to an unknown conclusion. Balancing thoughts of an uncertain future with those of how far I had come, Johnson Oatman’s hymn that we sang in the chapel seemed to speak to my situation:

  When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,

  When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,

  Count your many blessings, name them one by one,

  And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

  43

  The collapse of our three-person cabal of the Balokole had uprooted my spiritual life from its previous mooring in a group. Though Omange and I continued meeting without E.K., the collective spirit was not the same. I sought refuge where I had always found it: in the chapel and the Sunday school. The interfaith chapel, with its gothic pointed arch, was built between 1933 and 1934. The chapel was meant to be a symbol of God’s presence in the school, the motive power behind its work and service, but it would also be a continuing reminder of the unity between Alliance and the colonial state.

  Our chapel had no resident chaplain but instead relied on guest laymen, reverends, and bishops. I was endlessly fascinated by the different characters behind the pulpit. Some preachers appealed to the heart directly; others, the mind; and yet others, a mixture of the two. Generally the services were serious, somber, and reflective, but they were also performances, for though the order of service was set, each featured speaker brought his own ways and mannerisms into the pulpit.

  Such was the case when Reverend Handley Hooper, formerly of Church Missionary Society (CMS) of Kahuhia, led the service one Sunday in December 1956. Behind the pulpit, he stood tall, calm, and collected, nothing dramatic about him. Then, taking a plate to illustrate something, it slipped from his clumsy fingers and fell to the floor, breaking into pieces. I was aghast. Slowly, deliberately, he bent down and picked up the pieces, one by one. A heart that was ready for Jesus, he said, had to break to pieces in humility and repentance. The Holy Ghost would put the pieces together to create something whole. The breakage, though real, was an act. Those who had heard him before talked of other acts they had seen, different but equally effective in drawing attention to the central theme of his sermons.

  The entire community of students, teachers, and staff had to attend the chapel, the basic way in which they expressed their commitment to the school’s practical and spiritual ideal of producing faithful Christian servants. Work in the classroom, participation on the playing field, and voluntary extracurricular activities in the community were part of the process. Voluntary work best expressed the spirit of commitment because it carried no reward other than service itself. For me, the Sunday school, throughout my four years, became such a service and reward.

  I don’t know how I came to volunteer for Sunday school at Kĩnoo, five or six miles away, rather than in the immediate neighborhood. Getting to Kĩnoo was a test of will and determination. One had to cross Ndurarua River, and then many valleys and ridges, including Itukaria forest, to get there and then back, so attending Sunday school at Kĩnoo meant a whole day.

  I took over leadership at the end of 1957 and looked forward to my first Sunday as the leader of a new team of four. I knew the ritual very well. The pupils gathered together for the preliminaries before breaking into separate rooms for the different teachers and then reassembling for the closing prayer, nearly always the Lord’s Prayer. The leader guided the opening and closing ceremonies. For the last three years I had seen others do it with apparent ease and authority. I could have gone through the routine blindfolded. But when I stood up and all those expectant eyes were fixed on me, I felt the weight of the moment. I was glad and relieved when I finally came to the closing prayer, which now I announced with authority. I was supposed to say the first line, Our Father who art in Heaven, but nerves took over. I forgot the line. There was an awkward silence. In desperation I said just about any words that came to my tongue: Heaven forgive; give us Heaven. But the pupils were generous. They ignored my confusion and sang the entire Lord’s Prayer from beginning to end.

  I was a little shaken. I had thought that stage fright applied to actors only, but now I understood. I knew the prayer by heart, having first memorized it way back in my elementary days at Kamandũra, and yet when the moment came, I froze. It was a humbling experience and a lesson. The rest of the Sundays in 1958 went smoothly, with parents and children in the area getting to know me as Mwalimu and occasionally inviting me and my team to their homes.

  Most students did not participate in Sunday school. In the afternoon they would go about their personal business, hang around the compound and study, visit home for those who lived in the nearby neighborhoods, or walk to the valley for dates with Acrossians. These boys had the most glamorous stories to tell in the evenings, as if taunting us with what we, the Sunday scholars, had missed. Certainly no tale about teaching scriptures could successfully compete with those about adventures with nymphs in the famous magic valley.

  But I was not about to give up my Sunday school for social outings. The eager faces of the children reminded me of the magic of my own Sunday schools at Kamandũra. Later my commitment was reinforced by my personal and dramatic experience of evangelical Christianity. The commitment preceded and survived the breakup of the cabal. Not once did the preparation for the exams of my life ever tempt me to quit Sunday school at Kĩnoo.

  44

  Not
surprisingly, sports were a requirement at Alliance, for they educated the body in the same way that the classroom did the mind and the chapel the soul. Chess, though not a requirement, could contribute to character. Together they created the man strong to serve. Although from the time of Grieves’s leadership sports had been important, it was Carey Francis who turned the playing field into a secular equivalent of the chapel. He brought to Maseno and Alliance the passion he had already acquired in his youth in England, where he captained soccer, cricket, and tennis teams. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he had been a member of the First XI soccer team.*

  I never stood out in any team sports. My lack of coordination was almost comical. In soccer, the ball seemed to deliberately avoid me or else pass me by, mocking my leg in the air. My hockey stick nearly always missed the ball. I did, however, excel at indoor games, even if they were not at the center of the Alliance ideal. Although they were deemed merely recreational, I found them formative of character, mind, and soul.

  I had joined the chess club begun by David Martin in 1950. Not having come from a feudal order, I found its medieval characters of kings, queens, knights, bishops, footmen or pawns in their descending order of value, the highest to the lowest, all in defense of the king, strange, even confusing at first. But once I mastered the rules, I took to it. Nicodemus Asinjo, one of the best in my time, could think several moves ahead. He had early on discovered the power of the pawn; sometimes he would even sacrifice his queen for pawn and position, which he would use to devastating effect. It became a life lesson for me: even in the lowest of persons, there is great potential, or as the Gĩkũyũ proverb put it, heavy rains start with a drop. Chess, though, had few regularly active followers compared with other sports. For some it was too slow; for others it involved too much thinking and mental calculation. It was a war game and called for mental endurance and the ability to vary tactics within a strategic vision, the very reasons I liked it.