THE ROAD FROM NYERI TO NANYUKI

“Here, Malika, I have a good one for you.” We were driving towards Nanyuki. We had been on the road for almost two hours. The land had changed from the green, heavily cultivated hills of Nyeri to flat plains that stretched on for miles. Occasionally, the flatness was broken by a collection of trees. To the east Mount Kenya sat, heavy and solid, far removed from the shimmering mirages that were sometimes visible from my husband’s office in Nairobi.

“I know you will like this story. It takes place during the period of the Mau Mau. There were several young men who had left their villages and gone to the forests to fight. Every night they assembled under the thick trees on the slopes of the Abedares, talking amongst themselves, counting their supplies. They counted their ammunition over and over again as if the counting was a ritual that would magically multiply the few bullets they had. They would design their own weapons and plan how to get the parts: scraps of iron piping, nuts and bolts and springs. They would plan on how to scavenge them from the old tractors that were rusting in the backyards of farms across the white highlands.

“These young men were turning into trees; their hair grew thick and matted like yours. They let their beards grow too, until you could no longer recognize them when you saw them in the village. Soil filled the cracks in their hardened feet and brilliantly coloured butterflies took refuge in their hair. They continued to visit the villages, slipping in and out at night, collecting food and blankets and whatever supplies their families could spare. This was before the villages had been emptied and the families sent to the reserves. You see, Malika, even as on one side of the world the British were saying “never again”, and sentencing armies of Germans to an eternity of guilt, here, under the cover of the Abedare forests, those same British were building the same camps that they had liberated so triumphantly.

“One day, several of the men had to go on a long trip. A meeting had been called of all the guerrilla camps in this area. They were to meet on the other side of the mountain. It was said that Dedan Kimaathi would attend that meeting. Kimaathi was constantly travelling the region, talking to the guerrillas, collecting their meeting notes, keeping them up-to-date on the political developments in Nairobi and the other rebellions that were taking root around the country. He even let them know about the other revolutions that were happening in other parts of the world. Kimaathi seemed to understand how important it was to be clear about what it was the men had gone to the forests to do. He made all the camps keep notes of their meetings and their activities, so that one day, when it was all over, and we were free, we could stand before the world and say: see, this was not the reflex of a trapped animal, this was a people organising to drive out the enemy that otherwise would have destroyed them.

“In order to get to the place where the meeting was to be held, the group of men had to cross these same fields of grass that we are driving through. As you can see, the land is flat. There are few trees, no ditches or hills, nowhere for the tree-men to hide as they made their way that day across to the other side of the mountain. There had been a rainstorm one night; it made it impossible for them to cross the fields in the dark, and they were eager to reach the meeting on time, because, who knew how long it would last before word leaked through to the white men and their askaris that deep in the forests, on the other side of the mountain, the guerrillas were meeting. So, the group of men risked crossing the fields during the day.

“Now, Malika, I know you know all about disguises and costumes. These men had disguised themselves perfectly for the thick forests of the Abedares, but here on the savanna, in the middle of the day, with the sun shining brightly in a clear blue sky, they were out in the open for anyone to see. And not all eyes were friendly.

“Around noon, as they contemplated finding a place where they could stop and eat, they felt a low rumbling sound beneath their feet, as if far away a mountain was slowly falling, collapsing into the ground. Overhead, they heard the drone of a small aeroplane riding the hot air, high above the savannah. At first, they could not tell where the Land Rovers were coming from, even as they felt the all-seeing eye above boring into the tops of their heads. They began to run around, in ever-widening circles, sometimes stopping to climb on each other’s shoulders, testing the wind, watching for flocks of startled birds, looking for the approaching vehicles. The plane overhead sputtered, the pilot content to glide on the hot air and watch the imminent capture on the ground. “One of the young fighters spotted the Land Rovers. The vehicles were coming from several directions at once. The fighters continued to run, this time in shrinking circles, until they were breathing in each others’ breath, sensing the closeness of each others’ bodies, their muscles tight with anticipation of the confrontation. After some time they stopped running, because the distance between them was so little that each one could communicate with the next one with a look, or a hand gesture, which was passed on from one to another around the entire circle.

“Then, one of them crouched in the middle of the circle, and took his fire sticks out of the leather bag on his back. He placed one stick on the ground and held the other one vertically over it. He began to rub the vertical stick between his hands, this way, that way, faster, faster, faster. His companions continued to circle him, one eye on the aeroplane overhead, the other on the approaching Land Rovers. He blew at the sparks that flew from the sticks and continued twisting this way, that way. He pushed some dried grass and dried cow dung close to where the sparks were flying out of the wood. A small flame appeared, he cupped it, and blew and blew, all the while singing under his breath the children’s song that tells the shy fire to come out and play. And then the grass and dung began to burn. He grabbed a handful of grass and held it to the smouldering dung and continued to blow. The grass caught fire. He handed the burning grass to one of his companions; he grabbed another handful of grass, and when this was lit, he passed it on to another man; and so on until they all held these clumps of burning grass in their hands. And the circle began to widen as the young men ran faster and faster, further and further, this time towards the approaching Land Rovers. As the young men ran the savannah began to burn. And as the grass caught fire, the man in the middle, the one who made the flames, broke into a song asking forgiveness of the swara, the duiker, the dik dik and the field mouse – and all of the other creatures who lived on this ground...

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