Echoes From A Distant Land Part 34

They sat in the second-cla.s.s carriage, Muthuri at the window, as the train climbed towards the Mau escarpment, north of Nairobi. Muthuri talked about his plans for the coming months. He said he wanted to spend more time away from the coast.

'This is where we will begin our big push,' he said, pointing out the window at the rolling hills around Limuru. 'Here in Kikuyuland, and it is the Wakikuyu who will be our warriors in the battles ahead.'

Jelani followed his gesture. Food gardens climbed the slopes of red volcanic soil to tea and coffee plantations along the ridges. It was late morning and Kikuyu farmers dotted the landscape tending their plots - or more likely, the acres of the white land owners. It was an outlook similar to that from his home on the slopes of Mt Kenya.

'That is why I'm moving my office to Nairobi,' Muthuri added, then turned to peer out the window as the train snaked its way along the contours into the next valley. Here another patchwork quilt of crops coloured the hillside. Ca.s.sava, maize, chick peas, beans, sorghum. The squatters grew everything they could, but not the cash crops - coffee, tea and wheat - that were the exclusive preserve of the whites.

Shortly after pa.s.sing through the village of Kikuyu, the train driver tooted as the line crossed the road through Sigona Country Club, where groups of golfers strolled the green fairways. .h.i.tting then foolishly following little white b.a.l.l.s. Black boys carried their heavy golf bags.

Here and there were thatched villages sitting in the folds of the land or down on the flat beside a stream.

The train clattered across culverts covering the leaping waters of streams that dashed down to the tributaries of the Mathare or Nairobi rivers, depending upon what side of the watershed the tracks were situated.

'I've been thinking, Karura,' Muthuri said after some time. 'I would like you to move to our Nairobi office too. I will need your help as our work there increases. The union has a small bungalow among the railway workers' huts. Do you know the place? It's near the Nairobi station.'

'Yes, I had a place there years ago.'

'It's a small place, but enough for you and your wife.'

'I'd like that, Chege. But I have no wife.'

'Good. That's good. A wife could become a problem.'

Jelani would have liked to ask why, but his boss continued.

'When you get back to Mombasa, pack your things and come back to Nairobi as soon as you can. There is much to do.' He glanced at Jelani. 'Yes, we need more people in Nairobi these days. Can you drive a car?'

'No.'

'Hmm ... Well, I think we should give you some lessons in these things.'

Jelani was excited about learning to drive, but tried to remain casual. There were weightier matters to discuss.

Muthuri continued: 'I want you at Nakuru as I have invited a fellow called Kenyatta to join me. Have you heard of him?'

Jelani thought he had, but couldn't recall the context. He shook his head.

'Kenyatta ...' Muthuri said derisively. 'What kind of name is that, ah? And Jomo - they say it means burning spear. I've never heard of it. But he is making a big name for himself. He is popular with we Kikuyu; and he has some connections with the Maasai. I'm not sure, but I think he lived in Narok for some time. Anyway, I want him to address the meeting. And I want you to speak to as many people as you can afterwards. I want to know what people think of him. If he can make an impact on these simple fellows up in Nakuru, I might invite him to join our movement.'

The town of Nakuru spread east from the railway station through a dusty stretch of flat country dotted with Indian trade stores, farming equipment suppliers, horse traders and stock and station agents, into a sweep of lush gra.s.s that climbed past a number of large farms and ranches to the top of the Great Rift Valley. There the eye could travel for forty miles before it again met the same level of the land on the far side.

Below the railway line Nakuru fell away through a series of squalid little huts and dukas to the lake and its enormous flocks of flamingos and water birds. Not more than two hundred yards from the line was the produce market's array of local eating places that offered Jelani's favourite meal - nyama choma - and a slab-top table to sit at while eating it.

Jelani did just that the first time he had a free hour and was soon in conversation with another customer - an older Kikuyu man - also enjoying the barbecued meat.

'Mombasa,' Jelani told him, when asked where he lived.

'So far from home,' the man said, shaking his head in sympathy. As a brother Kikuyu, he recognised the difficulty of leaving the homeland.

'But soon I will be moving back to Nairobi,' Jelani added.

The older man nodded, unconvinced it was much of an improvement on the situation.

Neither of them was in a hurry and they spoke at length about home and, as people do when meeting a countryman, explored the possibility of mutual acquaintances. They identified a few distant cousins; and the conversations became more personal.

'How is it for you here in Nakuru?' Jelani asked.

The other man shrugged. 'In the Rift Valley there is not enough land. My family of seven and I ... we have a small plot. But we are always fighting with the Maasai, who think they can graze their cattle wherever they please.'

'So I have heard,' Jelani responded. 'But what can be done?'

'Land reform.' The farmer spoke the words reverently, as if in themselves they held the answer to the problem.

Jelani waited for further explanation. It didn't come.

'But how?' he asked.

The man hesitated, perhaps a.s.sessing how much he could say to the relative of a distant cousin, who lived in faraway Mombasa.

'The Movement,' he said at last.

'You mean the Mau Mau,' Jelani said in equally lowered tones. 'I have heard that they make their supporters take an oath.'

'You make it sound unusual. Surely you know of the power of an oath.'

Oaths were in common use among the Kikuyu. Just as a white would swear on a Bible, a Kikuyu man would take an oath.

'I have, but if the cause is good, why is there a need for an oath?'

'Everywhere there are traitors. An oath-taker will not betray. Who knows what the whites can do to force someone to report on his friends?'

'And what can we gain from these Mau Mau in return for our oaths?'

'They are trying to help us win some land.'

'How do they do that?'

'They are making it difficult for the white farmers. They destroy their fences. They poison waterholes. They hamstring their cows.'

'Hamstring their cows!' Jelani said, horrified at the thought of such cruelty. 'How can that help their cause?'

The man shrugged. 'Anything that makes life difficult for white farmers will make it easier for them to leave our land to us. Or so some of the big men say.'

A big man was anyone with power and influence.

'But who?' Jelani pressed him.

'I know of one man, Kenyatta by name.'

'Is he one of the Mau Mau?'

The man nodded. 'Yes. I think so. Like them, he speaks of land reform. He travels all around the Rift Province, telling the people to be ready.'

'Ready for what?'

'I don't know. He doesn't make it clear. But some say he will lead an army to throw out the whites.'

The union meeting was held in the open s.p.a.ce at the centre of the produce market. The s.p.a.ce was lit by paraffin torches that smoked and flickered, sending shadows dancing across the faces of the crowd. Some sat on the emptied produce benches surrounding the square; others stood behind them, four deep in places.

Muthuri opened the meeting and spoke about the need for solidarity now that the business leaders and the administration had formed a united block against them. And he appealed for new members to shoulder the financial burden of continuing the fight.

Jelani frantically scribbled his notes, not daring to lift his head. At the end of his speech, Muthuri received only lukewarm applause. Then he introduced Jomo Kenyatta.

Carrying his elephant-headed ebony walking stick as though it were a ceremonial sceptre, Kenyatta strode to the centre of the crowd like a monarch about to conduct an audience among his subjects. He was a short, stocky individual with a pointed goatee beard. He wore flannel trousers and an opened leather jacket that revealed a beaded Maasai kinyatta belt around his sizeable girth. Perched on his ma.s.sive head was a colourful embroidered Luo hat. But it was his eyes that commanded everyone's attention. Even in the dull light of the lanterns, they shone like burning coals in the heart of a brazier. They demanded attention and the crowd gave it willingly.

Within a few minutes, Jelani recognised him as the speaker at Nasar Visram's house in Mombasa; he abandoned his notebook to watch enthralled as Kenyatta roused his audience with compelling words and dramatic mannerisms. He spoke in Swahili, which was not fluent, but he used simple words to carry his meaning. Occasionally he would inject a few more sophisticated English words to perhaps indicate his higher education, but he never obscured his message: Kenyatta was a man of the people; he understood them and was a champion of their causes.

He reminded the gathering that they should not forget their origins, no matter to what tribe they belonged. He said that the whites knew that they had to first sever the connection between Africans and their ancestors before they could break them in as common labourers and servants. He warned them about trusting the missionaries who came with lofty talk of G.o.d and salvation, but with the implied threat of h.e.l.lfire and retribution unless they followed their rules.

'When the missionaries arrived,' he said, 'the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land, and we had the Bible.'

Then he turned his attention to the people in his audience who worked the land and had come to hear what the union and others might say on their behalf.

'I know that many of you squatter-labourers have been put in a bad place. You have lost your land and been offered a pittance to work it on behalf of the new white owners. I know you work on that land every day of the month, with your women and children beside you at times, for no more than twelve or fourteen s.h.i.+llings. I know that you must pay twenty of those s.h.i.+llings in poll tax every year. For what?' He glared into the faces staring at him from the gloom. 'Do you get to vote for the men who impose these taxes and conditions upon you? No. Do you get the right to better yourself by planting cash crops? No. If you are lucky, the farmer will allow you to plant some maize on the acre he offers you - an acre you may have once owned. But can you sell it in this very market?' He waved his arms to indicate the empty stalls. 'No. The government says you must sell it to the white farmer for fourteen or fifteen s.h.i.+llings a bag, and then another foreigner - perhaps a Mahindi in his Indian duka - sells it back to you for thirty-two!

'And what does your half s.h.i.+lling per day buy you in the white man's store or the Indian's duka? Nothing. A cheap s.h.i.+rt costs you four s.h.i.+llings. An axe to cut your firewood, six or eight.

'We Africans are paying taxes to the white man to keep his fine house and his fine life. Will we continue to tolerate this?' he asked, his voice rising in volume.

There was a rumble of discontented voices.

His voice dropped to a whisper, but one that could be heard to the back row of his audience. 'Then I say to you, my friends: prepare. Prepare to fight for the return of your land; the return of your livelihood; and the return of your dignity.'

Jelani looked around him. n.o.body spoke, but there wasn't a person in the audience not contemplating the vision that Jomo Kenyatta had dared to reveal to them.

CHAPTER 40.

The fifteen-year-old Model B Ford the union used to ferry officials around Nairobi's employment sites was not one of the very handsome black models Jelani had seen in American films, with high pointed bonnets and sleek mudguards and running boards. It was narrow and boxy and one of the windows wouldn't wind up. It was also hard to start and Jelani often had the demeaning task of cranking it. But driving it was about the most exciting experience he'd had since he was a boy taunting buffaloes for the sport of having them chase him up a tree.

He loved the subtle power he felt emanating from under the bonnet. The mysteries of the internal combustion engine enthralled him regardless of his ignorance of its workings. When there were no others in the car he would hang his head out the window to feel the air rush through his hair. He washed and polished the duco until it gleamed.

While returning to the Nairobi office after driving one of the organisers to a meeting, Jelani saw an African man sprinting down the centre of Government Road in the vicinity of Central Police Station. Two policemen were running after him. Three more followed half a block behind.

The fleeing man shot past Jelani, who had, like most other drivers on both sides of the road, stopped to watch the drama unfold.

The man was a Kikuyu and the fact that so many police were chasing him probably meant he would be in serious trouble if caught.

The escapee turned down Gulzaar Street and Jelani made a left at the next street to continue to watch the action.

He saw the man emerge from Gulzaar and make a short dash along Stewart before turning into Bazaar Street. A good manoeuvre, thought Jelani, who by now had developed some sympathy for this lone person escaping from superior forces. His detour into Bazaar Street with its maze of Indian shops and alleys behind was exactly what Jelani would have done in the same circ.u.mstances. And Bazaar Street was only a block away from the produce market, which is where he would go and guessed the running man would too.

He could identify with the escapee. He and many of his family, friends and acquaintances had had similar run-ins with the police. From childhood they'd been the enemy; and since then he'd heard and seen many instances where the law had not acted fairly nor honourably.

By now he had become enthralled by the chase and he drove to the market and parked the car at the rear among the vendors' trucks and hand-trolleys. It was as if he was part of a Hollywood film and he was the hero's trusty sidekick with a getaway plan unknown to all but himself. So when the man appeared in the parking area, Jelani flashed his headlights at him without a second thought.

The man saw him, but hesitated.

Jelani opened the door and waved him over.

'Brother!' he shouted in Kikuyu. 'This way!'

The man dashed to the car and dived into the pa.s.senger seat.

When the adrenalin had subsided, and Jelani and his rescued escapee were driving down Ngong Road, Jelani suddenly realised what he'd done: he'd used the official vehicle of the Transport and Allied Workers' Union to a.s.sist a fugitive to escape custody. If the Trades Union Council heard of it, he would be finished with the union.

Jelani glanced sideways at his pa.s.senger - the man might be a murderer, or a madman. His breathing had returned to normal, but he still had the look of a wild animal, with tangled hair, tattered clothes and blazing eyes.

The man must have felt Jelani's gaze, and turned to him. Jelani returned his attention to the road, which was almost devoid of traffic through the Ngong Road Forest.

'Keep driving towards the Ngong hills,' the escapee said.

Jelani nodded.

'I am Dedan Kimathi,' he said. 'Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi.'

Jelani nodded, unsure of what he meant by field marshal - Kimathi was only a little older than he was.

'... of the Land and Freedom Army.'

Mau Mau, Jelani thought, confirming his worst fears. I have rescued a terrorist escaping from the government.

Kimathi read his mind. 'You are a Kikuyu,' he said. 'You know of the Mau Mau. You know our work.'

'Um ...' Jelani said.

'Surely you know how many of us have been thrown from our land?'

'I do,' Jelani answered, keen to find common ground. 'Even my own family were put off our land and sent to a white man's farm.'

'And what did your father do about it?'

'Well ... what could he do?'